Sins of the Fathers by James Scott Bell

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Sins of the Fathers
Copyright © 2005 by James Scott Bell
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Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-10: 0-310-25330-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25330-3
LCCN: 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.
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Interior design by Beth Shagene
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /?DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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 ofthe 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-yearold
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.
P A R T I
O N E
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 puttputted
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 onceover.
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 lawand-
order Los Angeles was something of a miracle. Lindy had tried
a few