by Steven Gore
Chapter 8
I know who killed Mark Hamlin.” A recorded voice overrode the next words spoken by the man. “This is a call from a California state prison.”
It had come in on Hamlin’s main firm number. The caller had asked for Donnally by name, and Jackson had routed it to him in Hamlin’s office. Donnally was relieved that he had enough of her cooperation for her at least to do that.
Unless the murder was a gang-related execution, which the condition of Hamlin’s body suggested it wasn’t, Donnally wasn’t sure how someone in prison could have any credible information.
“Who did it?”
“Pay me a visit and I’ll tell you the story.”
The man’s voice sounded as though he was in his fifties or sixties, maybe older.
“How do I know you’re not a lunatic?”
The line beeped, indicating that the call was being recorded.
“Look at my file. It’s somewhere in the office. Five years ago. My name’s Bennie Madison. A murder case. There’s no psych report in there and no trips to the loony bin. I’m as sane as anybody ever is in here.”
“Hold on.”
Donnally wrote out the name, then walked to the outer office and asked Jackson to retrieve the file. He kept watch on her as she pulled it from a cabinet in the conference room and brought it to him. He sat down and flipped it open.
“There’s almost nothing in here,” Donnally told the caller. “A police report, a detective’s investigative log, a transcript of your plea, and a court sentencing form. Twenty-five to life.”
“There should be a letter in there I sent last month saying I’m filing a motion to withdraw my plea.”
“I don’t see it. Did you want Hamlin to represent you?”
The man laughed. “Not a chance. It’s the last thing that asshole would’ve done.”
“Because …”
“Take a drive up here and you’ll find out.”
“Where’s here?”
“The California Medical Facility in Vacaville. And I’ll also tell you why someone wanted him dead.”
“You’re being a little too cryptic for me to spend the hours it would take to get up there and back at this point in the investigation.”
“You’re gonna have to see me eventually, might as well make it now.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Donnally disconnected and called the SFPD homicide detective whose name appeared on the log. She told him that Bennie Madison had pled guilty to a robbery murder. He’d dragged the victim into an alley near her downtown office as she walked from an ATM to her car. He stabbed her, robbed her, and then flopped her body into a Dumpster.
Madison had been homeless at the time, living under an overpass. He was arrested for trespassing a couple of days later, and the arresting officer found the victim’s wallet and credit cards in his backpack. Madison claimed he found it all in an alley. A city worker in the area of the bank around the time of the murder wasn’t able to ID Madison, but gave a description of the killer’s clothes that matched his.
The clincher in the case was a statement from a jailhouse informant that Madison had confessed to the crime and tried to get the informant to send someone to dispose of the knife, which was hidden inside his sleeping bag. Detectives went to the overpass, located it, and the lab later found traces of the victim’s blood lodged between the blade and the hilt.
“The unusual thing,” the detective said, “was that Hamlin volunteered to represent the guy pro bono and took the case over from the court-appointed lawyer.”
“Why was that?”
“My guess? Grandstanding and money. A public defender proved that an informant in another case was making up stories in exchange for get-out-of-jail-free cards. I suspect Hamlin figured if he had a horse in the race he could ride the scandal to the bank a few times. I think the plan was that he’d prove that the informant in the Madison case was a liar, then get other convicts sending him retainers to reopen their cases.”
“But Madison ended up pleading guilty anyway.”
“Two weeks later, before he even had a preliminary hearing—and I still don’t have a clue why. What kind of idiot pleads to a life sentence? The smarter move would’ve been to roll the dice. You never know what a San Francisco jury will do.”
Chapter 9
Donnally looked at his watch as he hung up the telephone. An hour-and-a-half drive out to Vacaville in the Central Valley, an hour with Madison, and the trip back. A decade earlier he could’ve badged his way into the facility; this time he’d have to rely on Navarro to make the appointment for him and get him inside.
After a drive that took him over the spot where Hamlin’s body was found under Golden Gate Bridge, up through the hills of Marin County, skirting the north end of the bay, and past suburbs and outlet malls spread out in a series of wide valleys, he pulled into a parking spot outside the California Medical Facility. He unclipped his holster and slipped his semiautomatic into the glove compartment.
Madison’s correctional counselor met Donnally in the small administration building, a one-story, wooden structure set into the razor wire–topped fence surrounding the prison.
“Five years nobody comes to see this guy,” Rich Taylor said after Donnally showed him the court order appointing him special master, “and now you’re third in the last month.”
“Who else?”
Taylor pointed at the order. “Hamlin was the first. Then a lawyer who specializes in getting convictions overturned. Not as sleazy as Hamlin, may he rest in peace, but close.”
“Why is Madison in here rather than in a regular prison?”
“You’ll have to ask him. That kind of medical information is covered by HIPAA.” Taylor paused, biting his lower lip, then said, “But I can tell you this. We’re moving him out of here in the next few weeks. He’s about to start doing some really hard time in supermax. Maybe up in Pelican Bay.”
Taylor pointed toward the security station. “Why don’t you go through and I’ll take you to him.”
Donnally emptied his pockets, took off his belt and shoes, and put everything in a plastic tray. He waited until it got moving toward the scanner tunnel, then stepped through the metal detector.
Taylor met him on the other side and walked with him into the main building and up to his second floor office. A middle-aged prisoner with scraggly white hair sat handcuffed to a chair, a soiled manila envelope lying on his lap, a cane leaning against the wall next to him. A guard wearing a protective vest and a shielded riot helmet stood across from him.
Taylor introduced Donnally to Madison, then uncuffed him and led them inside.
“You guys can talk in here,” Taylor said, then directed Donnally to his chair behind the desk and Madison to the one in the front. He pointed at the phone. “Call the operator and they’ll page me when you’re done. Just hit zero.” Taylor then nodded toward a red alarm button on the wall next to the desk. Donnally got the message and nodded back.
Donnally waited until Taylor closed the office door behind him, then said, “I know who you are and you know who I am, so let’s skip the preliminaries.”
Madison smiled. “You’re just as advertised.” He tilted his head toward the window overlooking the rows of cell blocks. “Some guys remembered you from your cop days.”
Donnally didn’t respond, just stared at him.
Madison nodded. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. No preliminaries.” He hunched forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, looking up from under his eyebrows. “I’ll start with the punch line. Hamlin hired me to ride the beef.”
Donnally didn’t know what to make of the claim. The problem with the truth and nothing but the truth is it sometimes sounded like a big lie.
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 si
de 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.”
Chapter 10
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.
He took this clench to be anger.
“He told me he’d never do that,” Jackson said, speaking through an unmoving jaw.
“You sure he didn’t get this stuff from a relative’s estate?” Navarro asked.
“He would’ve made me look at it. He was a showoff about money and shit.”
“At least he had the good sense to keep this a secret from you,” Do
nnally said. “It shows he was at least embarrassed.”
She stared at the box for a few moments. “I don’t think so. I don’t think it was that at all,” and then she turned away and left the room.
Chapter 11
Fuck that bitch,” Rudy Rusch told Donnally from behind the bar in the grimy and shadowed Hideaway Lounge just off Mission Street, a few miles southwest of the Hall of Justice. Rusch stopped toweling the dark oak surface and leaned his hairy-armed, six-four frame down toward Donnally and lowered his voice. “If Madison hadn’t killed her, I would’ve done it myself.”
Rusch’s delivery had a practiced tone, almost rhythmic. Donnally wondered how many times he’d repeated those phrases since the night of his wife’s murder.
“He’s saying you did do it,” Donnally said, “and you paid off Mark Hamlin to get him to plead to the sheet.”
“Sure I gave Hamlin some money. I don’t deny it. A lot of money. He came to me and said he could make the case go away, and fast.”
“Why the hurry?”
“Shit, man.” Rusch surveyed the crowd, bikers hunched over tables and talking low, and skinny girlfriends with tangled hair and windblown faces sipping beers and wine coolers in the booths and waiting for the men’s business to get done. “Hamlin was gonna try to frame me, expose the stuff that goes on in here to make me look like the kind of guy who’d kill his wife for cheating on him.”
Donnally smiled. So far, his story made as much sense as Madison’s.
“But you are the kind of guy who would kill his wife for cheating on him,” Donnally said. “And I take it she was.”
“Yeah. With some asshole in the office she was working in. Some fucking stockbroker. We were short on cash and she got herself hired on as a temp. It started out with her being his drug connection.” He glanced toward one of the biker tables as though her source was sitting there now. “Then they started hooking up after work. Every fucking time I turned my back.”
What he meant to say was that every time he turned his back they were fucking. Donnally wondered why he didn’t just come out and say it. Maybe he wasn’t as tough as he pretended.
