Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

And this sounded like a big lie.

“Why would you take the job?” Donnally asked. “Twenty-five to life would pretty much take you past retirement age, maybe even to an eternity in a pine box.”

Madison leaned back, turned the side of his head toward Donnally, then separated the hair above his ear.

Donnally could make out a four-inch scar.

“Brain tumor. The doctors at the county hospital took it out and I did radiation and chemo, but it came back again. They said I had no more than a year to live. I figured, why not? I’d get better medical treatment in here than on the outside and Hamlin said he’d keep me happy. Money every month. Nice TV in my cell. Any kind of drugs I want, prescription”-he flashed a grin-“or otherwise. Hamlin has a lot of old clients in here, guys with connections. They can smuggle in anything. Anything at all. It’s just like being on the outside.”

“But you’re still alive.”

Madison made a smacking sound with his lips, then said, “I hadn’t counted on that. The law changed and the government started letting prisoners be in clinical trials. I hit a home run doing one of them and went into remission.”

This was the only thing Madison had said so far that seemed credible. After accusations of reckless experimentation, the Department of Corrections had barred prisoners from participating in trials. The legislature had reversed the ban a few years earlier.

Madison slid the manila envelope across the desk.

“The report of my last PET-CT is in there. Clean as clean could be.”

Donnally read it and handed it back.

“If you didn’t do the crime, who did?”

Donnally guessed what Madison’s answer would be, true or not, assuming that Madison knew the homicide statistics as well as he did.

“The woman’s husband,” Madison said. “She was cheating on him. And he’s a hard guy. Real hard. Story was he grabbed her as she was getting cash out of the ATM to buy her boyfriend something. It was the boyfriend’s birthday and she didn’t want the payment for his present to show up on her credit card.”

“What about your confession to the jailhouse informant?”

“He’s the guy who recruited me and sold the deal to Hamlin. He got five grand out of it.”

“And the knife?”

Madison smiled again. “You studied up. Hamlin’s PI got it from her husband and hid it in my sleeping bag for the police to find.”

The fact that the story sounded like something Hamlin would do, didn’t mean to Donnally that he’d done it.

“How long have you been in remission?”

“A year and a half, but I didn’t want to make a move until I was sure it was gonna stick.” Madison’s face darkened and he slapped the edge of the desk. “But then that asshole Hamlin tried to fuck me. He stopped putting the money on my books like he was supposed to.”

“And so you sent him a letter threatening to file a motion to withdraw your plea.”

Madison nodded. “A little sooner than I’d planned. I was hoping to wait until after my next scan. But I’d gotten used to the finer things in prison life, and doing without was pissing me off, so I made my move.”

“How do you know it wasn’t the husband who stopped paying Hamlin, so he had to stop paying you?”

“Because the deal was there would always be a hundred grand on account, in cash. I could draw out as much as I needed every month. The husband would add to it if it went under. Even if the guy stopped paying, it would’ve taken a couple of more years for the money to run out.”

“I guess they didn’t expect you to live so long.”

“So what? That’s not my problem. A deal’s a deal.”

“And you figure the husband killed Hamlin.”

“Has to be. Only way for a surefire cover-up.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to take you out?”

“They tried.” Madison pointed out the window toward the prison blocks. “I’ve been in isolation for the last month, after an Aryan Brotherhood guy tried to shank me. Since then, if hubby was gonna break the chain, he was gonna have to do it at the Hamlin link. Ain’t no way they’re getting to me again.”

Madison pointed toward the door. “That guard outside? He ain’t standing there to protect you from me, but me from them.”

Takiyah Jackson was sitting at her desk when Donnally arrived at Hamlin’s office.

Donnally had called Navarro while he was driving back from Vacaville and got confirmation his earlier theory had been right. Navarro knew the players in town. He’d recognized the name of the victim’s husband, not because he’d worked on the Bennie Madison case, but because the husband owned a well-known biker bar in the mostly Hispanic Mission District. It now made sense that the husband could’ve sicced an imprisoned gang member on Madison.

Navarro walked in a few minutes after Donnally had taken Jackson into the conference room.

Donnally glanced over at Navarro, pointed at the two-foot-square safe in the corner, and said to Jackson, “I have reason to believe there is evidence related to Mark’s death in that thing and I wanted a witness when we opened it up.”

Jackson swallowed and twisted her hands together on top of the conference table. Her daunted gaze shifted between Navarro and Donnally.

“Why do you need a witness?”

“There may be money in there and I don’t want anybody accusing me of stealing any.”

She tilted her head toward the row of filing cabinets. “You tell him about the file?”

Donnally shook his head, hoping Navarro wouldn’t react and give him away.

“It wasn’t relevant to any of the leads we’re working on.”

“You have the combination,” Navarro said. The sentence came out as a statement, not a question.

“Mark gave it to me only for emergencies.”

Donnally understood her to be saying she wasn’t responsible for what they would find inside.

“I’d say this was an emergency.”

Donnally followed her over to the safe, where she kneeled and spun the combination right, left, right, and then pushed the handle down and pulled the door open. She then raised her hands and backed away as though trying to break her connection with whatever they would find inside.

“You got some latex gloves?” Donnally asked Navarro.

Navarro reached into his inside suit jacket pocket and gave him a pair and slipped ones on his own hands. He lowered himself to one knee, pulled out a digital camera, and took a couple of photos of the inside of the safe.

Donnally began moving the safe’s contents onto the conference table. Financial records, checkbooks, file folders, and notes. On the third reach, he pulled out a rubber-banded stack of hundred-dollar bills, almost five inches high. He looked over at Jackson.

She shrugged.

“Does that mean you know where this money came from?” Donnally asked.

“There’s always cash in there. Usually about a hundred thousand. Sometimes less. Sometimes more.”

“And. .”

“No, I don’t know where that particular money came from.”

Donnally reached in again and removed another stack and laid it next to the other. He estimated that each held between forty and fifty thousand dollars.

After emptying all the paper out of the safe, he felt around and discovered a small metal box against the back wall. He held it by the edges, pulled it out, and set it on the table. He used the end of a pen to open the latch. Inside he found diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and old gold coins.

Donnally suspected it might be stolen property Hamlin had taken in legal fees.

He glanced over at Jackson. Her teeth were clenched. He wondered about her psychological makeup since her only ways of expressing emotion seemed to be tapping her finger or clenching her teeth.