Текст книги "A Criminal Defense: A Harlan Donnally Novel"

Автор книги: Steven Gore

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 57

Three A.M. and Donnally was still staring at his bedroom ceiling and listening to pounding raindrops that had ridden the squalls up from the Pacific three blocks away and then swept down onto the neighborhood. He was hoping his phone would ring with the news that Hancock had been saved from Ryvver and Ryvver had been saved from herself.

His job as special master was over. He’d sat in the van for two hours feeling his court-appointed identity dissolve and watching himself return to who he was before Judge McMullin had signed the order.

Mark Hamlin’s death was solely a law enforcement issue. There was no privilege left to protect, and he and the judge had agreed he should back away. The arrest would be clean, and any admissions Ryvver made would be unimpeachable in court.

And he had realized he was now twice done with San Francisco, each time a decade apart, each time having broken free of the city’s vortex of crime and corruption.

Even now, he felt his stomach tighten with guilt when he thought of his pushing Janie out onto an ethical tightrope, pressuring her to extract information from Jackson. That they succeeded in the end wasn’t justification enough.

Listening to the crash of distant thunder and watching the ceiling strobe with faint lightning, he wondered whether he could convince Janie to move north with him to Mount Shasta and to take a job in the nearby VA clinic. Maybe that way they could narrow the circumference of their lives and free themselves from the kinds of contingencies that had pulled them into Hamlin’s.

Donnally felt a wrenching contraction of the world toward the California Academy of Sciences, then its expansion into the infinity of unknowing. He might be done fugitive hunting, but the fugitive hunter’s nightmare wasn’t done with him.

He thought about Ryvver’s two mothers, now together in the surveillance van praying she’d show up, and then about the girl murdered by Hamlin’s stalker client and his nouveau riche parents humiliated by the prosecution of their son, wanting to get it over with. Keep him off death row, but on the shelf for life. Make him old news as fast as possible and make the world forget.

His mind jumped back.

Humiliated.

Donnally sat up. Janie looked over. She, too, was still awake. He said the word aloud.

“You may be right,” Janie said. “And she now knows how to do it.”

They were in the car in three minutes and pulled into the Fort Point parking lot twelve minutes later. He’d called Navarro on the way. Donnally told Janie what his route up to the lighthouse would be, then left her to meet Navarro. He wanted to make sure Navarro or another officer didn’t shoot him by mistake in the darkness.

Donnally’s eyes adjusted slowly to the shadows under the bridge and his ears took in nothing but the gusts shuddering through the Golden Gate and the raindrops exploding on the water-sheeted pavement and the waves crashing onto the rocks below.

As he ran toward the fort he looked up at the dark lighthouse, backlit by city lights reflecting off the low clouds, a mass of black on top of a skeleton of angled steel.

And the bridge high and behind it, another skeleton, another black mass, headlights and halogens illuminating the surface like a sunset.

The two structures looked like dinosaurs. Mother and child.

Now soaked through his clothes, he made his way around the south end, not using his flashlight for fear of giving away his presence. He slowed, searching for the door through which Camacho had carried Hamlin’s corpse, feeling along the brick wall. His shoe hit something hard, he pitched forward, then caught himself, one hand on the ground, the other braced against brick, his hip once again torn with pain. He looked up as lightning shot across the sky and lit up a man-sized frame of metal ten feet away. He crept over to it and then reached past the edge, encountering the nothingness of the open door. He slid his hand down, and his fingers touched the hasp holes no longer filled by the padlock.

Ryvver had broken in for a second time.

With the premeditation required to trap Hancock and to again buy rope and a bolt cutter, Donnally didn’t see Ryvver—whoever her lawyer was and whatever medication she’d taken—obtaining a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

There was no madness in her method.

Another burst of lightning bounced off the brick wall and the metal door. He ducked as something swung at him. It thunked against the doorjamb. He rushed the moving shadow behind it, hitting it low and taking the flailing body down. He heard a ringing of metal hitting concrete. He expected to hear Ryvver’s scream; instead it was Jackson swearing and pounding on his back.

“Let me go, you motherfucker. Let me go.”

Donnally got her into a headlock, his arms under hers and his hand braced against her neck.

“It’s me,” Donnally said.

Jackson stopped struggling.

“Why’d you take a swing at me?”

“I thought you were a security guard or a cop.”

Donnally released her and pushed himself up onto his knee.

“Is she inside?” Donnally asked.

He could now make out Jackson in the darkness.

“Her and Reggie. I guessed they’d be here.”

“Why didn’t you call somebody, clue us in?”

“Because I didn’t want some trigger-happy idiot to shoot her.”

“Like me?”

“Take it any way you want. And I didn’t want her to panic and kill him.” She pointed toward the courtyard. “I was just about to go up when I heard you trip and fall, so I came back.”

Donnally stood and reached down to help her up.

“Show me.”

Jackson led him down a short hallway toward an opening into the courtyard. He scanned the three stories of arched walls, looking scalloped in the night. He stayed in the shadows as he squinted up toward the lighthouse. He spotted movement, but not on the ocean side where Hamlin had been left hanging from the walkway with his feet scraping the fort’s roof, but on the bay side facing them, above an eighty-foot drop to the floor on which Donnally was standing.

A male voice called out from above, fighting the wind and rain.

“Please, don’t. Please.”

Then louder.

“Please, I’m begging you.”

Jackson moved forward as if to cut across the courtyard. He grabbed her and jerked her back, and then stepped near the curve of the arch and looked up. Now he could make out two figures standing along the lighthouse railing. Neither was moving.

He whispered to Jackson that they should make their way around the perimeter, then up the stairs he’d told Janie he’d use.

Donnally turned back and led her through the vaulted rampart, their footfalls masked by the brick around him and by the rain and wind swirling around the lighthouse. They worked their way along two sides of the courtyard, then stopped at the base of the circular stairway.

Donnally turned back toward Jackson. “When we get to the roof, try to get to the opposite side of the lighthouse and get her attention. Keep her looking your way. Don’t react to anything I do.”

Jackson grabbed his arm. He felt her quivering with wet and cold and fear. “You’re not gonna . . .”

“No. I won’t shoot her.”

He headed up the steps, Jackson behind him.

Once on the roof, they held back in the shadows. He waited for a lightning burst, then made a curving motion with his hand, indicating the route he wanted Jackson to take, and signaled her to go ahead.

He watched her sneak across the roof and past the crisscrossing metal supports of the tower. He waited until she called out, “Ryvver . . . Ryvver . . . It’s me . . .” then he crept along the roof edge.

Hancock started yelling again, now begging. “Please. Please. Help me.”

Donnally looked up. Hancock was standing on a ledge, outside the walkway, a noose around his neck, hands bound. The other end of the rope was tied to the railing. Ryvver stood behind him, her hand gripping the knot at the back of his head.

Ryvver screamed down at Jackson. “You’re as evil as the rest of them.”

“He had nothing to do with Little Bud,” Jackson yelled back. “Nothing. It was all Mark and Frank.”

“You’re lying.”

Donnally reached the foot of the lighthouse, then took off his belt, held it in his teeth, and monkey-barred his way up under the wrought-iron stairs and around the walkway until he was just under Hancock. He could see the tips of Hancock’s shoes overhanging the ledge and could see his legs trembling in the wet and cold.

Donnally locked his hand around Hancock’s ankle. He felt the man’s body jerk in surprise, then shudder in fear. Donnally patted his leg to calm him, then released his grip and pulled himself up farther until he could see Ryvver. She was still holding the rope, but was looking away and down toward Jackson. He slipped the belt behind Hancock’s legs just above his knees and around the rail post behind him, then cinched the buckle closed.

Hancock sighed.

Donnally heard it.

Ryvver heard it.

She looked at Hancock, then down.

Lightning flared. Then again. Almost strobing, illuminating her pale face consumed by shock and fury.

Donnally was now illuminated, confronting her like a living nightmare. As thunder vibrated the lighthouse, rain tattooed his face and eyes as he grabbed the railing to pull himself up.

Ryvver shoved Hancock. He rocked forward, against the belt tying him to the railing. He screamed. A rising wail. But it held, and he straightened up.

She shoved again.

Donnally had a leg up to the ledge, now pulling hard. He saw her hand come around Hancock’s body. When she extended her arm toward him, he knew what was coming. He ducked just before the bang and muzzle flash.

Hancock jerked back and to the side, trying to butt her with his shoulder and head.

Donnally pulled himself over the railing, then reached around Hancock, grabbed her, and threw her into the lighthouse wall.

The gun discharged a second time. Hancock grunted and slumped forward.

Donnally swung at her, but missed. Her hand came up. He blocked it with his forearm and grabbed the front of her jacket.

The gun fired again. A simultaneous flash, bang, and thunk of lead punching sheet metal behind him.

Now she was flailing, swinging at him with fist and barrel.

He heard running footfalls on the roof—Navarro and Janie—and knew he couldn’t risk another wild shot.

He threw her toward the railing, thinking she’d drop the gun and grab for a handhold. But she didn’t. The muzzle flamed upward as she fell back and over and she merged into the void.

Then there was just the sound of the wind and the rain, until she struck the floor with a thud of flesh and bone, and a rattle of gunmetal on concrete.

Chapter 58

District Attorney Hannah Goldhagen stood on the roof of Fort Point just before sunrise, gazing up at the criminal defense lawyer still tied to the railing with Donnally’s belt, his dead body doubled over. She then looked down at Ryvver splayed on the courtyard.

She glanced over at Donnally.

“Sorry,” Goldhagen said. “It never crossed my mind it might come to this kind of thing. I thought maybe it would be an angry client or sex that went bad . . . something . . . anything . . . but not this.”

Donnally was listening to her, but was replaying in his mind the last seconds of Ryvver’s and Hancock’s lives.

He’d been surprised by the gun until he’d remembered that one had been stolen from Hamlin’s nightstand. Even back then, Ryvver must have known she’d have at least a second, maybe even a third victim.

Donnally imagined Ryvver tying Hamlin to a chair in his apartment, him thinking he could buy his life back by paying with lies, then realizing he couldn’t, and the only thing that might save him was what he had never done: Tell the truth.

But it had come too late.

Janie shivered next to him. He reached an arm around her. She had felt for Hancock’s pulse in the darkness, checked Ryvver’s body, and then tried to console the two mothers in the parking lot when the surveillance crew brought them over from Golden Gate Park.

Navarro had ordered the bodies left where they were until the crime scene crew finished their work. He wanted to make sure he got it right. His career, first tied to Hamlin’s, was now also tied to Hancock’s.

Standing there, they all already knew the future. There would be questions and press conferences and grand juries, and later, when the rolling scheme was exposed, court hearings and dismissals and reversals, and eventually dozens of crooks would walk back out through prison doors, the Assistant U.S. Attorney would be fired for conspiring with Hamlin and Hancock . . .

Donnally felt his mind race ahead, riding a wave of bitterness and anger, for the thought that had framed his struggles in the last days had been true. The momentum of Hamlin’s existence, the chains of causes and effects, of things done and suffered, hadn’t ended with his death.

And he was certain Hancock’s wouldn’t end with his.

“What’s the truth?” Goldhagen asked. “Did Hancock have anything to do with Little Bud?”

“Specifically,” Donnally said, “I don’t know. But generally, yes. He was part of Hamlin’s world, what made up his world. There was nothing he could say that would’ve saved him from Ryvver. As crazy as she was, she understood everything.”

Donnally closed his eyes, remembering Ryvver going over the railing, realizing now that she hadn’t screamed as she fell, and in those empty moments he’d felt the presence of her mothers. He’d called out Janie’s name, fearing a stray bullet had found her, wrenched by guilt until her voice reached out to him from the wind and rain.

Then came the scream. Jackson’s. And her sobbing that continued even into the ambulance that had taken her away.

Donnally opened his eyes again and looked up at the bridge, at the spectators gazing down, their cell phone cameras taking pictures and videos.

This time he didn’t care what they saw, what they photographed, what they videoed.

Let the facts be known and the truth be seen.

Wasn’t that why Judge McMullin had appointed him?

And hadn’t the time now come?

Special master.

He did his job and found Hamlin’s killer, but he wasn’t sure what he’d mastered.

Helplessness sank into Donnally as he realized that all he’d discovered in the end were the steps and the path Hamlin had taken in becoming who he was, but not why he’d chosen to take them. And in his weariness, Donnally found himself fearing he’d simply run up against the limits of understanding human beings such as Hamlin and then anguishing over whether those limits were in himself or in the world.

And he sure hadn’t mastered the facts of what had happened soon enough—wasn’t sure even now he’d mastered them all—otherwise there wouldn’t be two dead bodies in front of him.

He thought of the words Goldhagen had spoken when they last stood in this spot. She’d been wrong. The shortest distance hadn’t been a straight line. It had been through a maze that took him not to the heart of the matter, but only back to where he’d started.

“Do you know why Ryvver was so determined to go after Hancock?” Goldhagen asked.

Donnally squinted against the swirling salt wind and looked up at Hancock’s inert body, his suit jacket flapping and his pant legs fluttering, the mountain climber’s rope quivering, and then he thought of Ryvver tightening the noose around Hamlin’s neck and later Hancock’s, and confronting Lange in between, drugging him and searching his files.

He realized his theory had been mistaken. She’d scattered Lange’s papers not because she was trying to destroy them in the fire, but because she’d been searching for something, maybe something she’d seen while she worked for him that had become meaningful when she’d interrogated and tortured Hamlin.

“I suspect she wanted a final confirmation Hancock was somehow responsible for Little Bud’s suicide,” Donnally said. “Either directly because it was one of his clients who rolled on Little Bud, or indirectly because he was Hamlin’s partner in the kind of evil that made Little Bud’s death inevitable.”

“But I don’t get why Hancock would come up to San Francisco,” Goldhagen said. “He must’ve suspected he might be walking into a trap.”

“My guess is something terrified him enough to make it worth the risk.”

Donnally thought of Sheldon Galen and Takiyah Jackson, the surviving links in the chains of wrongdoing, and of the Vietnamese holding a gun at his back in the parking garage, and of victims’ brothers and fathers, sisters and mothers, and of trials twisted by perjury and corrupted by manufactured evidence.

“It might even be the real reason Hamlin told Jackson to reach out to me if something happened to him. Maybe that’s what Ryvver found in Lange’s files and became her leverage against Hancock.”

Donnally sensed Goldhagen’s head turn toward him and felt her eyes lock on him.

His body stiffened. He met her gaze and shook his head.

“Don’t worry,” Goldhagen said. “I’m not even going to ask.”

Note to the Reader

I was surprised one day when an image came to me of Mark Hamlin hanging from the lighthouse on the roof of Fort Point. I had intended to limit him to the part of a role player in Act of Deceit, but that still image developed into a moving scene, and that scene transformed that first Harlan Donnally novel from a standalone into the beginning of a series.

Writers know much more about their characters than appears in the book, and often the depth of a minor character is shown only by implication. A Criminal Defense became an opportunity to put more of Hamlin, and those like him in the legal community, on the page.

Each Donnally book sets its story in a part of the American criminal justice system. Act of Deceit began with a systemic failure relating to how courts deal with defendants found incompetent to stand trial. A Criminal Defense deals with criminality on the defense side. And, after having leaned rather heavily on the defense in this novel, book three will rebalance the scales by looking at a corrupt prosecution.

While the particular events that Donnally discovers in A Criminal Defense are fictional, in the way of fiction they represent, and I hope bring home to my readers, a disturbing reality. One can debate whether truth, in fact, is stranger than fiction, but one of the advantages of the latter is that you get to push certain kinds of truth a little farther down the road it was already headed. In this book, that road was paved by the fictional life of Mark Hamlin and his overdetermined death.

Acknowledgments

I have been fortunate to again have had the benefit of readings of the manuscript by my wife, Liz, whose insights have made me a better writer and Harlan Donnally a deeper character. I owe special thanks to my sister Diane Gore-Uecker and my mother-in-law, Alice Litov, ceaseless supporters of my books, to Dennis Barley, whose thoughts about the first draft went a long way to improve the story, and to Myles Knapp, who was kind enough to read the manuscript far ahead of publication and comment on it in excellent detail. As an investigator, I had the benefit of working with some of the best, including my wife, Dennis, Trevor Patterson, Randy Schmidt, Rick Monge, and Nancie Huntington, whose professional and ethical standards were as high as the character Frank Lange’s were low. Thanks also to Susan Ryan at the River Reader in Guerneville, who let me rename her store and rearrange the fictional furniture for the sake of the plot, and to Gabe Robinson, who was kind enough to help with translations.

Thanks to my editor, Emily Krump at HarperCollins, who spotted gaps in the plot and in character development invisible to me that would have been all too visible and troubling to the reader. Thanks also to my copyeditor, Eleanor Mikucki, for her help in turning the obstacle course of my writing into a smoother run for the reader, my publicist, Katie Steinberg, for her enthusiasm and tireless support of my books, and to artist Alan Ayers and designer Tom Egner for the stunning cover. Finally, I appreciate more than I can say the countless readers who have sent such generous e-mails about both the Graham Gage and the Harlan Donnally books.

About the Author

STEVEN GORE is a former private investigator whose thrillers draw on his investigations of murder, fraud, money laundering, organized crime, political corruption, and drug, sex, and arms trafficking, in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Gore has been featured on 60 Minutes for his work and has been honored for excellence in his field. He is trained in forensic science and has lectured to professional organizations on a wide range of legal and criminal subjects. To find out more, please visit www.stevengore.com.

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