Steven Gore - A Criminal Defense

He felt himself cringe. She’d already gotten inside his head and figured out what he’d been thinking earlier, even repeating his own half-spoken words to him.

He now wondered whether his puzzlement was less a carryover from his own past, and more just residue from the resignation he’d felt, that every San Francisco cop felt, after they’d spent a few years in the investigations bureau, especially in homicide, where he had been assigned when he first met Janie.

Early in their careers, anger defined cops’ attitudes toward the Hamlins of the world. Later it transformed into outrage that neither the judges nor the DAs were willing to take them on. Finally, they just got beaten down and felt themselves reduced to note takers, surrendering their role as law enforcement officers after coming to accept that the enforcement of the law was out of their hands.

Donnally had sometimes felt queasy when he looked at the words “Hall of Justice” as he walked up the wide steps and into the building, for it seemed to proclaim a fact when those inside had yet to prove it up, and never would since they had allowed lawyers like Hamlin to corrupt the process.

“You’re right,” Donnally said. “I’ve never understood these guys. Maybe I’ll learn something.”

And maybe I’ll learn why I’m doing this. And why I couldn’t walk away.

He knew it wasn’t just curiosity. There were lots of things in the world to be curious about.

It was-

He felt his body push back against the seat as Navarro began a twisting ascent up the hill on which Hamlin’s house sat. Then again as the car downshifted.

Donnally surprised himself when the answer came. It was an old anger, an old outrage, not only at the death of Hamlin and at whoever murdered him, but at Hamlin the man.

But he wanted to think through what that meant before expressing the thought to Janie.

“Be sure to take good notes,” Janie said, “and maybe you can explain him to me.”

She paused for a moment, then said, “But don’t kid yourself, pal. Whether you solve the enigma of Hamlin or not, now that you’re in it, you won’t be walking away until you figure out why his life ended this way. And it’s not that I think you’ll like doing it. You won’t. You’ll despise every minute of it, but your world will seem disjointed until you get the answer.”

Donnally’s thoughts continued moving after they disconnected the call, first returning to those that had begun the day, the ones about matter and motion, and then toward Hamlin’s body at rest in the medical examiner’s office, and finally toward Jackson’s terror. And he wondered whether he had it backward. Maybe he’d been wrong and Janie only partially right. Maybe it wasn’t just whether the world was done with Hamlin, but whether Hamlin was done with the world-for the momentum of the lawyer’s existence-the chains of causes and effects, of things done and suffered-hadn’t ceased with his death.

And Donnally wondered whether that was the real source of his anger.

The uniformed officer standing on Mark Hamlin’s porch raised his hands as though in a protestation of innocence as Donnally and Navarro climbed the stairs of the three-story Victorian duplex facing Buena Vista Park and overlooking the distant downtown.

They’d just pushed their way through four reporters from local television and radio stations, two from national cable channels, and five from newspapers, all jabbing video cameras and microphones toward their faces and asking nonsensical who, where, how, and why questions that if they already had the answers to, they wouldn’t be bothering to search Hamlin’s residence.

“I didn’t do it,” the officer said, “I didn’t touch a thing.” He turned and opened the front door of the multimillion-dollar property and gestured toward the interior. “It’s just the way we found it.”

Donnally and Navarro drew on latex gloves and slipped on polyethylene shoe covers and crossed the threshold into the foyer. Straight ahead was the hallway leading to the kitchen. They turned left and examined the living room. The plaster walls were eggshell white and pristine, looking as though they’d never felt the impact of a child’s ball or a bicycle tire, seeming as though never touched by life at all. The couch, chairs, and tables, on the other hand, were as strewn with trash as the passenger seat of Hamlin’s Porsche. Books, pleadings, and files were also piled on the Oriental rugs covering the parquet floors. The only unlittered furniture were the bookcases standing along the wall opposite the fireplace and framing the television and DVD player. These bore dozens of Asian artifacts, from pottery bowls to brass statues to a collection of long-stemmed clay pipes, all spaced and positioned as if part of a museum exhibit.

“Try not to focus too long on paper you’re not supposed to be looking at,” Donnally said to Navarro as they walked through the living room.

“Unless there’s blood spatter on it or it’s a signed confession from the killer, I won’t be paying much attention.”

Navarro stopped and glanced at the chaos of half-used legal pads and scattered folders lying on the dining room table. Interleaved were misfolded newspaper sections, legal journals, and flyers announcing political events.

“I know Goldhagen was playing like she wants to leverage this investigation into a way to reopen a bunch of Hamlin’s old cases,” Navarro said, “but I don’t see her doing it. I suspect that his closet has got a few bones from her skeleton in it, too.”

Donnally looked over at Navarro. “What do you mean?”

“A lot has happened since you moved north. Hamlin and a bunch of his pals did some fund-raisers for her reelection campaign.”

“You’ve got to be-” Donnally remembered Goldhagen’s aggression-apparent aggression-toward Hamlin and his practice, and realized it was an act for his benefit, or maybe for the judge’s or Navarro’s as a way of demonstrating her independence.

“It’s true,” Navarro said. “He’d done enough posturing over the years about civil rights and lesbian and gay rights and transgender rights and immigrant rights and dog and cat rights that he could deliver up to any politician any group that devoted itself to playing the victim. It’s like a. .” Navarro flicked his fingers next to his head like he was flipping through note cards in his mind. “What do you call it where two people share the same delusion?”

Donnally guessed that Navarro assumed he’d know the word because the nature of Janie’s work-and he did.

“A folie a deux,” Donnally said.

“That’s it. That’s what he has with the LGBT groups. They act like we live in a Jim Crow world, but they control who gets elected in this town, who gets appointed police chief, and who gets the big city contracts. Whenever something bad happened, Hamlin would undergo some kind of mind meld with them in their fake victimization. Some transgender idiot would get his ass kicked, and Hamlin was on TV declaring a hate crime. Never considered the possibility that the asshole might’ve deserved it. Lot of rough stuff happens in the Castro and most of it people bring on themselves.”

“Sounds like you’ve joined the Log Cabin Republicans,” Donnally said. “I wouldn’t have expected it.”

“Being gay doesn’t mean I have to follow the party line and wiggle my ass in a conga line at the pride parade. I moved out here in order to fit in and live a normal life, not to keep drawing attention to myself.” Navarro tapped his chest. “I’m a cop. Not a gay cop, or a fag cop, or a ho-mo-sex-u-al cop. A cop. If I hear somebody yell one more time, ‘We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it,’ I’ll rip out his vocal cords. Everybody in San Francisco is already used to it.”