Jeff Sherratt - The Brimstone Murders

It was almost dark after the three hour drive when I pulled into my office back in Downey. I patted my jacket pocket where the power of attorney rested, folded and signed by Hazel Farris, mother of the defendant. I smiled.

The lights were on when I cracked open the door and peered in the office. Mabel, our firm’s business manager was gone for the day but Rita, my young associate, was there. She was leaning against the desk, talking.

“No, I told you, I don’t know where he’s been.”

When she noticed me coming through the door, she turned away from the two men in suits standing ramrod straight off to the side.

Her face was white. “Jimmy, these guys are homicide detectives. They want to talk to you,” she said in a hushed tone.

“Why?”

“A patrolman from the Valley called them. Said they found your business card in a dead woman’s trailer. Do you know someone named Hazel Farris?

An hour later, I was in East L.A. being grilled at the sheriff’s headquarters by a couple of beefy homicide cops. No glaring lights, no rubber hoses, but I was in the hot seat and Rita was at my side. They knew I was at Hazel’s trailer just before the murder. The first cops on the scene had found my business card in her trailer and these guys said someone reported spotting a beat-up red Corvette leaving the area around the time of her death. Probably the guy who pointed out her trailer to me. I didn’t deny being there, but, of course, I denied any knowledge of her murder. Rita had insisted on accompanying me to the interview.

“Isn’t that what we always tell our clients, Jimmy?” Rita had said back at the office. “Don’t say anything unless your lawyer is present? Well, I’m going to be your lawyer tonight.”

I knew she was right, and it felt good having her with me.

Although Rita was single and beautiful, with dark flowing hair, sparkling eyes and a figure that would melt rocks, there was no office hanky-panky going on. She was twenty-six-much too young for me. And, even though she never put it into words, I was sure she looked up to me as her mentor. I was delighted to have her at my side. Maybe she’d gain some experience by being here, learn how to handle a homicide interview.

We followed the cops-at their strong suggestion-in Rita’s yellow Datsun to the Sheriff’s headquarters in East L.A. After being escorted to one of the homicide division’s interrogation rooms, Rita and I were informed that Hazel Farris had been shot through the forehead while sprawled in the same rocking chair in which she’d sat when I visited her. We were seated at a scratched, wooden interrogation table in a stark air-conditioned cubbyhole down the hall from the homicide squad room. Sergeant Joe Hammer and his partner Butch something-I didn’t catch his last name-started questioning me about my meeting. But first, I demanded to know who’d called them. I wanted to know the name of the person who saw my car at Hazel’s trailer. Maybe I could ask him if he saw someone else.

When they refused to divulge that information, Rita stood and told them we were through cooperating and we were now leaving. At that point, they let on that the call was anonymous.

“There you go,” I said, starting to stand again. “Whoever made that call was obviously the killer.”

“Sit down, O’Brien. We need to ask you a few things. We don’t need the guy who called it in. You admitted you were there at the time of her death.”

“Hold it, Hammer…” I started to say.

Rita piped up. “Don’t say anything, Jimmy. And just sit down.” Turning to the big cop, she said, “What my client is alluding to… what he started to say was Mrs. Farris, the decedent, was alive when he left.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Hazel was passed out in her chair…”

“Put a sock in it, Jimmy. Don’t say anything until I say it’s okay.” There was a slight edge in her voice.

Hammer paced the linoleum floor. He started tossing out questions, beginning with the obvious one, what was I doing there in the first place. Officer Butch stood silently in the corner taking notes, jotting in his police-issue interview pad.

Rita explained my reason for visiting Hazel at her trailer. She told Hammer how I needed her signature on the power of attorney.

Hammer’s face began to curl into an ugly grimace. “Let me get this straight, O’Brien,” he said to me, ignoring Rita. “You’re saying you just went there to get her to sign some kind of legal document regarding her son, a murderer, now in custody. Is that correct?” Hammer looked like a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a gas problem, but his tone was perfunctory.

I hunched up close to Rita and we had a small conference. Because I was going to use the insanity defense with Robbie, I felt, and Rita concurred, that I would not be violating attorney/client confidentiality by telling the police the details of my meeting with his mother. Rita advised me not to embellish, but go ahead and tell the cops exactly what happened in a straightforward manner.

I told them how Hazel Farris mentioned that Robbie was once a good boy. How she’d told me that when they moved to the Chatsworth area after her husband was killed, Robbie fell in with a bad crowd, teenage hoodlums who did drugs. “He turned bad and raised all kinds of hell,” Hazel had said.

After loosening up, she’d told me more. She had discussed Robbie’s problem with Elroy Snavley, the pastor of her church, The Divine Christ Ministry over on Winnetka Avenue. It was decided that Robbie should be sent away. At the pastor’s urging, she agreed to send him to a Christian intervention center somewhere in the desert, outside of Barstow.

According to the rules the center had imposed, she wasn’t allowed to visit her son or have any contact with him whatsoever.

But when Robbie returned home after a six-month stint, he was a different person. “He was cured of drugs, all right,” she’d said. “But his head was filled with that religious mumbo-jumbo those goons taught out there.”

She didn’t know what was worse, his lifeless state while on drugs, or the hyperactive ranting about his newfound salvation. “The Lord this and the Lord that, all day and all night. How much of that fire and brimstone crap could I take?” she’d said.

It wasn’t long after Robbie returned that he left again. That was about a year ago; she hadn’t heard a thing from him since, and until I broke the news, she knew nothing about Robbie stabbing the professor, or about his mental condition. She didn’t have any idea what may have caused him to snap.

“What’s all of this garbage have to do with the old woman’s murder, O’Brien?” Hammer asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing,” I said. “I’m just telling you what happened while I was there. Hey, maybe the spooks got her?”

“Spooks? What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Yeah, spooks, you know, ghosts, little goblins running around.” I did a little finger wave. “Wooo… she saw them all the time.”

Hammer gave me a hard-cop look, eyebrows arched with his chin jutting out. “What kind of horseshit are you feeding me, O’Brien?”

“You’re embellishing, Jimmy,” Rita said.

“Hey, I’m just telling him what she said.”

Hammer leaned down and got into my face. “Yeah, some boozed-up old broad tells you she sees ghosts, and you believe it?”

“Hey, Hammer, she was alive when I left. If you call being passed out in a chair living.”

“You’re saying she was out, dead drunk, when you left? Is that it?”

“She was breathing,” I said.

“You don’t get a big fat hole in the center of your forehead from booze, at least not from the stuff I drink.” The cop turned and snapped a finger at his partner. “Butch, listen up. What time did O’Brien say he left?”