Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

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.

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.