Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

Donnally recognized it was a lawyer’s answer, an evasion. He imagined an opposing attorney’s objection to the form of his question and Judge McMullin ruling, “Lack of foundation.”

He dropped back a step. “Did Mark tell you whether he was going somewhere other than to his home last night?”

She nodded. “He said he had an appointment to meet a new client.” Jackson half smiled, more of a smirk. “And no, he didn’t say who he was.”

“He?”

“He.”

“Where?”

Another shrug.

“Did he get any calls that you can connect with the appointment?”

“They could’ve come in on his cell phone.”

“Which means no?”

“Which means no.”

Donnally looked at Navarro, who dipped his head, acknowledging he’d get a court order from Judge McMullin to obtain Hamlin’s cell phone records for the last few weeks.

It had been a long time since Donnally had worked with someone who was as good at investigating crimes as Navarro, and realized he’d missed it. There was a fluidity of movement and unspoken cooperation up at his cafe in Mount Shasta, but hamburgers and omelets didn’t carry the moral weight of life and death and justice.

“What’s his cell number?” Navarro asked. Jackson reached into her suit pocket and handed him Hamlin’s business card. The detective accepted it and rose from his chair. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

After the door closed behind him, Donnally asked, “Why the change in attitude from this morning when you called me?”

“Dawn shed some light on the subject.”

“Which means?”

“I want immunity before I answer any more questions.”

“You didn’t kill him, so you don’t need it.”

“How can you be sure? How do you know I didn’t call you as a dodge, a kind of misdirection?”

“You want it because you’re concerned about what may come out about what’s been going on around here for the last twenty-some years. You figure a grant of immunity in the homicide will cover all your other sins, too.”

Jackson looked away. “Maybe.”

“Then you should ask yourself something else first. Like why Mark wanted me to do this. If he trusted me, then maybe you should, too.”

Jackson snorted. “At this point Mark’s got nothing to fear. And I don’t think it was a matter of him trusting you, but him not trusting the SFPD and the DA’s office and him not wanting someone to get away with killing him.” She smirked. “I have no doubt you’ve already heard the words ‘poetic justice’ spoken by somebody on their side.”

Donnally locked his expression on his face, trying not to reveal how accurate she was.

“But that’s not the kind of justice you’re worried about,” Donnally said. “You know the investigation into his murder-successful or not-poses the risk of exposing you to prosecution.” He gestured toward the outer office where Hamlin’s two paralegals waited in their cubicles to be interviewed. “And everybody else connected with Hamlin, too.”

Donnally had seen her type before-private investigators, paralegals, junior attorneys-in court hallways or behind defense tables, underlings of lawyers like Hamlin, with a cops-versus-cons mentality they’d adopted from their clients in which the cons were the victims and the cops were the persecutors. And this framing of the world provided both the logic and the justification for their acts of war against the integrity of the criminal justice system.

Donnally had learned that lesson while he was still a patrol officer. It was a delusional kind of thinking only matched by that of corrupt narcotics cops for whom the war on drugs justified planting evidence and framing those they believed-based on little more than a feeling in their gut-were guilty anyway.

But what explained the mentality of the underlings in their war against the system didn’t necessarily explain the Hamlins themselves. Donnally had long recognized there was more to them than that, more motivating them than that, but he’d never understood what it was.

Jackson didn’t respond right off. Her blinking accelerated and her hands formed into fists. “I always thought a sense of mission and loyalty went together. Driving over here I realized that they don’t. Mark was ready to throw us under the bus.”

Donnally could also see that Jackson now felt herself facing the prospect of no longer just playing the part of a con in fantasy, but of living the reality in state prison.

Suborning perjury: two to four years.

Destroying evidence: two to four years.

Concurrent: as few as two years.

Consecutive: as many as eight.

In her immunity demand, Donnally heard a disguised confession to all the police and prosecutors suspected Hamlin and his crew had been up to throughout his career.

Donnally looked up again at the second of the framed courtroom drawings he’d recognized when he first sat down.

People v. Demetrio Arellano .

Hamlin was pictured standing below the bench staring at his wristwatch, his right hand raised in the air, as though counting down to the dropping of the flag at the Indy 500. Except zero didn’t mark the start of a race, but the end. The killer went free because the single prosecution witness hadn’t appeared to testify.

It had been Navarro’s case.

On the night before he was to testify, the witness took a cab to the airport and caught a plane to El Salvador. Later, Navarro and Donnally searched the man’s Tenderloin District apartment and recovered an answering machine message.

Hey man, this is a friend. You show up in court and you’re gonna get busted for that thing you did in Texas. You know what it’s about and you’re in the crosshairs. They say scarcity is a bad thing. They’re wrong. It’s a good thing, a really good thing, if you know what I mean.

Navarro had suspected the caller was a private investigator hired by Hamlin. Who else would’ve known how to find out about an out-of-state warrant, and who else but Hamlin would’ve known how to phrase a threat solely out of statements from which the sense of menace could be parsed away in a sharp cross-examination.

In the end, no parsing was required because the witness never showed up again in San Francisco.

Demetrio Arellano walked on the case for lack of evidence.

Hamlin walked on the witness intimidation charge because no one could tie the tape to him.

And the private investigator, who Navarro later identified through a pretext call to his office, walked because the witness wasn’t around to authenticate the recording and testify that it hadn’t been altered.

Donnally looked back at Jackson.

“If I get you immunity,” Donnally said, “you’ll have to answer every question I ask. Every single one. That’s how immunity agreements read. It’s a contract. A trade. And it’s absolute.”

Jackson’s eyes widened and her jaw clenched. “Then I’ll take the Fifth on everything.”

“I know you think that sounds like something Mark would’ve said, but in the real world you can’t do that since not every answer will implicate you in a crime. Some may only implicate others. I’ll have Goldhagen put you in front of a grand jury, you’ll pull your stunt, and Judge McMullin will hold you in contempt and lock you up.”

Donnally paused and let a picture of San Francisco’s crowded, gang-ridden county jail form in her mind.

“You sure you want to be brushing shoulders with Hamlin’s old clients? Them all looking at you funny, wondering when you’re gonna crack and spill everything in order to get yourself sprung.”

Jackson’s finger started tapping again. It seemed to Donnally like a private sign language for spelling out her fears.

Donnally heard the door open. Navarro signaled him to come outside.