Sins of the Fathers Read online

  Also by James Scott Bell

  FICTION

  Deadlock

  Breach of Promise

  The Darwin Conspiracy

  Circumstantial Evidence

  Final Witness

  Blind Justice

  The Nephilim Seed

  City of Angels*

  Angels Flight*

  Angel of Mercy*

  A Greater Glory

  A Higher Justice

  A Certain Truth

  Glimpses of Paradise

  NONFICTION

  Write Great Fiction: Plot & Sturcture

  *coauthor

  Our fathers have sinned, and are not;

  and we have borne their iniquities.

  Lamentations 5:7 KJV

  Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay.

  Steven Tyler, “Dream On”

  ZONDERVAN

  Sins of the Fathers

  Copyright © 2005 by James Scott Bell

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  Mobipocket Edition February 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-54203-2

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, James Scott.

  Sins of the fathers / James Scott Bell.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25330-3

  1. Juvenile justice, Administration of—Fiction. 2. Attorney and client—Fiction. 3. Juvenile homicide—Fiction. 4. Women lawyers—Fiction. 5. Teenage boys—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.E5158S57 2005

  813'.54—dc22

  {B}

  2005004287

  * * *

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  _________________________________________________________

  06 07 08 09 10 11 12 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  For Nate

  CONTENT

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  PART II

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

  PROLOGUE

  Ollie M. Jones would be the first one the cops would talk to. The fact that he was spattered with blood no doubt had something to do with it. His white jersey with the blue Royals across the front was a canvas of dappled red, certain to catch the attention of the responding police officers.

  But Ollie would look back on it and know it wasn’t the blood that nabbed the gaze of the young LAPD badge, the one with the dark eyes and bull shoulders. It was the screams that did it.

  Ten minutes after it happened, Ollie was still screaming, unable to keep the horror silent.

  Tara Lundgren thought she heard the sound of several metal bats making contact with several balls simultaneously. That’s the way she described it to the reporters from the three local news stations, plus the CNN guy.

  “I was standing right here”—Tara indicated with her arm one of the park’s four baseball diamonds, the one in the northeast corner—“watching my son’s game, when I heard the shots. Like I said, it sounded like bats hitting balls, but then I thought to myself, it didn’t really, because a ball hitting these aluminum bats goes ping, and this sound was more like whap. Then I heard the screams, and I turned around like this”—Tara did a forty-five-degree pivot—“and I saw the people running. And I thought, no, it couldn’t be happening, it has to be a joke. But it wasn’t. Dear God, it wasn’t.”

  At the hospital, Robert Landis blocked the homicide detective’s path.

  “Sir,” the detective said, “the doctor says it’s all right—”

  “I don’t care what the doctor says.You can talk to him tomorrow, if he’s able, if he wants to, or you can—”

  “Sir, listen to me, I understand completely—”

  “Do you?”

  “I do, sir, I do. I have two boys of my own.”

  “He shot my son in the chest! While he was playing baseball!

  What kind of a sick . . . why don’t you just shoot him?”

  “Sir, if you’ll let me talk to your boy, we can put together a case, we can make sure this guy gets put away.”

  “No,” Robert Landis said. “Kill him. You have to kill him. You have to make sure of that.”

  “If you’ll let me see your boy now?”

  Robert Landis erupted in tears.

  “How many?”

  “As of now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Six.”

  “Six.” Syl Martindale’s breath left her, turning her chest into a vice.

  “Six kids dead.”

  “Five boys.” Reesa Birkins swallowed. Hard. “One adult.”

  “Why, why, why?”

  Reesa placed a hand on her friend’s arm. “That’s beyond us. I can’t understand it, I can’t. I just have to look to God to—”

  “God?” Syl sat straight up, jostling the coffee cup on the kitchen table. “What are you talking about? My best friend just watched her only child die in the dirt in front of her.”

  Chamberlain Mills, vice president of KNX Newsradio, 1070 AM, delivered his nightly editorial the following evening.

  “And now the scourge of violence has come not to another school campus, but to a public park, a place once thought safe in the daytime, a place where families could picnic or watch baseball games under blue southern California skies. That dream is now shattered. What is our answer? We must start with a deeper understanding of the cause of all this violence. How, we must ask, can a thirteen-year-old boy murder six people in cold blood? And what are we to do with mass murderers who have not even reached puberty? These are deep and troubling questions for our society.We must seek understanding above all else. Only then do we have a realistic hope for a solution.”

  “We’re going all the way on this one,” District Attorney John Sherman told the reporters. “This is it, the line in the
sand. We can’t let this keep happening. What we need here is not some wishy-washy understanding of sick minds. What we need is punishment for monsters. I don’t care how old they are.”

  And in the lockup at the Van Nuys jail, a four-by-eight reeking with the smell of ammonia and urine and sweat and old clothes, he sat alone, barely hearing the sound of cop footsteps and radio-static voices over intercoms, looking at his hands. For hours he would look at them, wondering if they were like his father’s hands, or would be when he was all grown up. And he would think about what he’d done and wonder even more, part of him at least, why he didn’t feel a thing about it. Not a single, solitary thing.

  PART I

  ONE

  1.

  Lindy Field gunned her Harley Fat Boy, snaking through the congested Los Angeles traffic in the Cahuenga Pass. She’d bought the bike for days like this, when she was late getting downtown and the LA freeway system was pulling its asphalt-glacier routine.

  Well, for that and because she just didn’t see herself as a car person. Inside all the best defense lawyers, Lindy believed, was a hog engine revved to the limit. She could not abide the lawyers who putt-putted around the criminal courts, doing deals when they should have been chewing prosecutors’ rear ends.

  The way she used to. Maybe the way she would again, if the chips fell right for a change.

  She made it to the Foltz Criminal Courts Building five minutes after her planned time of arrival and took off her helmet. She could feel her tight, sandy blonde curls expanding. Security gave her red leather jacket with the Aerosmith patch on the back a skeptical once-over. They probably thought she was just another family member of some loser defendant here in the city’s main criminal court center.

  Of course, Judge Roger Greene’s clerk, Anna Alvarez, knew her. She’d called Lindy to set up the meeting, the nature of which was still a mystery to Lindy. Anna stood at her desk in the empty courtroom and greeted Lindy like an old friend.

  “Hey, there she is. Been too long.”

  “What is this place?” Lindy looked at the walls. “It seems somehow familiar.”

  “Yes, it’s a courtroom. A place where strange lawyer creatures can sometimes be seen.”

  Lindy hugged Anna. “If a strange lawyer is what you want, I’m your girl.”

  “Good to have you back.”

  Was she back yet? You need a case and client for that, don’t you?

  Lindy breathed in the familiar smell of carpet and wood and leather.

  Yes, familiar, yet oddly out of reach.

  Anna took Lindy back to Greene’s chambers. Greene embraced her like a father welcoming his child home as Anna returned to her desk.

  Judge Roger Stanton Greene was fifty-seven, lean, with a full head of black hair streaked with imperial gray.Very judicial. Greene served in Vietnam as a Green Beret. Came back, finished first in his class at Stanford Law.

  And he was one of the better judges in town. Actually fair toward people accused of crimes. That he continued to be reelected in law-and- order Los Angeles was something of a miracle. Lindy had tried a few cases before him as a PD, and he always seemed to be looking for ways to cut her a break.

  “You look wonderful,” Judge Greene said.

  Lindy tossed her helmet on a chair. “You’re a great liar, Judge. Ever think of going back into practice?”

  He laughed. His chamber was filled with books—not just law, but all sorts of subjects. Greene was one of the most learned men she knew.

  “So how long’s it been since you’ve tried a case down here?” Greene asked.

  “A year.A little more.”

  “Get some skiing in during the off time?”

  “I don’t ski when I’m on meds. I tend to run into trees.”

  “Was it rough?”

  Lindy inhaled deeply. She knew he was referring to her crash-and-burn after the Marcel Lee verdict, when she went from rising deputy public defender to thirty-two-year-old washout. “Yeah, it’s been rough. But I beat it back with ice cream and Kate Hepburn movies. You’d be surprised what a little African Queen can do for the spirit.”

  “Who’s handling the Lee appeal now?”

  “Appellate Division. Menaster.”

  “He’s good. If there’s a way to get the thing reversed, he’ll find it.” Greene did not say it with much conviction. That was understandable. The days of frequent reversals were over. The fair citizens of California, demanding easy answers to a complex crime problem, were initiative happy. They passed laws that promised instant, get-tough results. They elected politicians and judges who strove to come down harder on crime than Torquemada. They passed bond measures to build more prisons to warehouse an ever-swelling population of hard timers and three-strike losers.

  And if a kid like Marcel Lee got tossed into that fetid swamp, so what? One more they wouldn’t have to worry about being out on the streets.

  Lindy felt that sensation that took over her skin whenever she thought of Marcel. Fever skin, her mother used to call it, when every pore felt sensitive and exposed. She couldn’t will it away, so she settled into a chair like a swami lowering himself onto a bed of nails.

  Greene sat behind his desk. “You have an office?”

  “I pay a guy for a mailing address in the Valley, and the use of his library and conference room.”

  “Hard to get started again?”

  “Only thing I know for sure, making it on your own as a lawyer is not about competence.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Overhead.”

  Greene nodded. “And getting clients.”

  “Oh yeah. I’ve heard of those.”

  “Why don’t you do one of those lawyer commercials? Like that guy who used to have his clients say, ‘He got me twenty million dollars.’”

  “Right. I can see it now. One of my guys pops onto the screen. ‘Lindy Field got me twenty years.’” It felt good to be talking plainly again.

  Greene swiveled in his chair, smiled. “So you want to know why I wanted to see you?”

  “Comic relief?”

  “An assignment.”

  “Cool. Court-appointed means county pays.”

  “It’s a juvenile matter.”

  An involuntary groan escaped Lindy’s throat. “Judge—”

  “Just hear me out.”

  “I don’t want to do juvenile again.”

  “I understand. But there’s something about this one. Does the name Darren DiCinni mean anything to you?”

  Lindy’s jaw dropped like a law book falling from a shelf.

  “That’s right,” Greene said. “The one who killed those kids at the baseball game.”

  Lindy tried to wipe the shock off her face.Was he actually asking her to rep the thirteen-year-old whose face was all over the news?

  “Won’t the public defender handle it?”

  “There’s a conflict.”

  “How?”

  “The boy’s father, Drake DiCinni, was repped by the PD’s office for something that got dismissed a year ago. So they can’t do it. Even if they could, I’d want you.”

  Lindy closed her eyes for a moment, trying to keep the office from closing in around her head. “But there are so many others you could tap.”

  “I know this is not your average juvi case. But you have a way with them.”

  “Had.”

  “You still do. You don’t lose that touch, Lindy, no matter what. And this kid’s going to need special handling.”

  “He said God told him to kill the people?” That’s what she’d read in the Times.

  “Right.”

  “He connected to some cult or anything?”

  Greene shrugged. “I only know what’s been reported.”

  Lindy paused, then shook her head slowly. “I just don’t think I’m ready for something this heavy.”

  “There’s one more thing. The deputy handling this is Leon Colby.”

  The name hit her like a spear. It took a long moment for Lindy to r
emove it. And then she felt the old wound, the one shaped like Marcel Lee. Colby prosecuted the Lee case, sent the boy away for life.

  “This is some kind of weird Twilight Zone, right?” Lindy put the heel of her palm on her forehead. “I’m going to be getting out of this universe soon, right?”

  “I know what you must be thinking.”

  “Really? You know? From on high?”

  Greene said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” Lindy said. “That was a rotten thing to say.”

  “It’s okay. I completely understand. Why don’t we just forget it?”

  Yes, forget it. Leave now before you change your mind. Leon Colby? Why had Greene even considered asking her?

  Maybe because he knew the thought of Colby coldly scavenging the bones of another kid almost made her gag.

  “Hey,” Greene said, “there’s a great play at the Taper. Have you seen—”

  “I’ll see him,” Lindy said.“Once. And I’m not promising anything.”

  “Lindy, you don’t have to—”

  “Don’t press your luck, Judge. Where is he now?”

  2.

  The last time Lindy was in Men’s Central Jail was during the Lee case, right after Marcel attempted suicide.

  Why wouldn’t he? This was no place for juveniles. That was the whole reason for having Juvenile Hall. But when the kids were tried as adults, Los Angeles threw them in Men’s Central, downtown, where they spent twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day locked in windowless four-by-eight-foot cells.

  Death-row inmates at Quentin had it better. Career criminals at Pelican Bay were on easy street by comparison. All those guys got ample time each day for showers, phone calls, and a walk in the corridor in front of their cells. Not the juvis in Men’s Central.

  Lindy remembered when the Times did a story on the horrible conditions behind the steel door of Module 4600 at Central, which guarded the two tiers of twenty-four cells where the juvis were housed. Four, five, or six to a cell. Some of the local politicians jumped on it and beat their chests for change. It gave them a couple days’ publicity.