A Criminal Defense (14 page)

Chapter 31

D
onnally looked up Frank Lange's address on the Internet, located his photo in the
San Francisco Chronicle
archives, and then headed out. A half hour later he slowed his truck near a three-story Victorian where Castro, Divisadero, and Waller came together, just three blocks east of Buena Vista Park. Mark Hamlin's apartment was on its opposite side. He verified the address, then drove on until he located a parking spot a couple of streets away, and walked back.

Any thought of confronting Lange with the tape got drowned out by party noises emanating from the house. From the recessed doorway of an apartment building across Divisadero, Donnally watched too many people in a dining room under a too bright chandelier jostle for places near the buffet table.

He didn't recognize anyone and didn't see Lange.

Donnally took a couple of photos with his cell phone, then worked his way around the perimeter of the Y intersection until he obtained a view of the Waller side of the house. He spotted Lange standing in the living room looking like a politician surrounded by reporters. The head shot Donnally had found on the Internet disguised Lange's girth. That, combined with his red sports jacket, made him look like a child's party balloon. It seemed to Donnally to be the perfect match of ego and physique.

Lange wasn't an investigator who relied on stealth. And if Jackson was right about the kind of work he did for Hamlin and for other attorneys like him, he didn't need to be furtive. It didn't make any difference whether witnesses or victims could see him coming, for he'd either just make up what he wanted victims or witnesses to have said, or try to intimidate them into saying it or into silence.

Lights were off on the upper floors. Donnally imagined Lange's bedroom and office were on the second story and that he used the angle-roofed third floor as storage. The ceiling seemed too low for regular use.

Donnally watched Lange and a skinny woman at least twenty-five years younger than Lange's early fifties turn together and walk toward the interior of the house. A minute later a light burst on in a second floor room. The angle of view was such that he couldn't tell what it was used for.

They faced each other.

She was glaring at him, her thin arms folded across her chest.

He stood with his hands extended.

Soon they were both jabbing fingers and waving hands.

From the violence of her gestures, Donnally guessed she could be angry enough at Lange to disclose some of his secrets, if she was in a position to know any.

Donnally snapped a photo, thinking that Jackson or Navarro might be able to identify her.

Lange reached for her shoulders. She stepped back. He reached again. She slapped him, then spun away. He stood there for a few seconds rubbing his cheek, then followed her out of Donnally's sight and the light went off.

Donnally took more photos of the people in the living room, then slipped his phone into his pocket and surveyed the third floor windows.

Assuming Judge McMullin would accept the argument that Lange kept his own copy of the Gordon interview recording in storage, Donnally didn't think it would be long before push did come to shove, and Navarro would be kicking in Lange's door to serve a search warrant.

Donnally leaned against the brick wall behind him. He'd expected his discovery of the perjury would give him a feeling of solidity, of having found a foothold; instead it was one of vertigo, of losing focus on what he'd been asked to do: figure out who killed Mark Hamlin—and not go on what McMullin had called a fishing expedition, even though Donnally guessed that he could pull some monsters from the deep—for who knew how many similar tapes might be discovered in Lange's storage room.

Forget the search warrant fantasy, he told himself. It wasn't going to happen, or it would come too late. He needed the recording as leverage to find out whether Lange knew, or even suspected, who the killer was—even at the risk of incriminating himself in other crimes.

But the danger of confronting Lange was—no, the consequence would be—that he would move anything incriminating out of his house.

Donnally pushed off from the wall. The chess game in his head continued while he walked back to his truck. He leans on Lange, then has Navarro spot on the investigator's house to see if he tries to sneak any boxes of records out, then follows Lange to where he stashes them.

Nope. Not worth the risk. What if Navarro gets caught? The defense bar goes haywire, the department gets embarrassed, and both Donnally and Judge McMullin get ripped in the press, Donnally for playing cop when he was supposed to be acting as a special master and McMullin for appointing him.

A guy like Lange, who does what he does and has so much to hide, always has to be looking over his shoulder.

Always.

Nobody will be sneaking up on Frank Lange.

Chapter 32

I
went to a conference today over at the USF Medical Center,” Janie said when Donnally walked into their bedroom. She was propped up in bed, drinking tea, and reading Lemmie Hamlin's latest book. “I asked around about whether anyone had ever worked on any cases for Mark Hamlin.”

Donnally kissed her on the forehead. “I suspect no one would admit it now.”

Janie smiled. “You wouldn't make a very good shrink. The urge to confess relationships with victims seems to follow like a vulture in death's wake.”

“Very literary.” He pointed at the book. “Is that where you got that line?”

“No. It just stirred my creative juices.”

Donnally grinned and raised his eyebrows. “Any other juices get stirred?”

“There was a great sex scene in chapter seven, but I didn't need the stirring.” She grinned back. “You know me.”

“Let me take a shower and I'll see what I can do.”

“Don't you want to know the gossip?”

Donnally nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Those who do forensic psychology in criminal cases are trapped in a weird conflict. They're proud to be known for their expertise, but they're embarrassed to have been chosen for their pliability. It hit me while I was listening to them how it really works. It's kind of like the way people adopt whatever religion they're born into, embrace it as though they'd chosen it themselves, and then become willing to kill and die for it.”

“And these shrinks adopt the point of view of whoever calls them first,” Donnally said, “and are willing to scheme and lie for it.”

“That's the implication.” She smiled. “And very poetic.”

Donnally had watched dozens of those hacks in homicide cases, especially capital cases in which psychologists and psychiatrists were called by the defense for what the law calls mitigation, to testify about how a murderer's unhappy childhood caused him to plan and execute a robbery murder, or even a series of them.

It angered him, even though he was no fan of the death penalty and would never vote for it himself either on a referendum ballot or as a member of a jury. And the advantage of working in San Francisco was that the DA rarely charged special circumstances and paid attention to a detective who argued against seeking death in a case.

At the same time, he hated the self-deceptions of the cottage industry that built up around capital cases. It was made up of attorneys, private investigators, mitigation specialists, psychologists, and social workers who always found a way to convince themselves that their particular crook's life was worth saving.

And it was absolute bullshit.

Murders have nothing to do with unhappy childhoods and everything to do with power.

Individually, none of the guilty defendants was worth saving. They were disgusting human beings who knew what they were doing, knew that it was wrong, and got a thrill out of doing it.

“I've never understood how people could do that kind of work,” Donnally said. “They delude themselves and deceive juries about what these guys really are.”

What made their lives worth saving was simply that they were human beings; that and the fact that errors were built into the system and it was wrong to exact absolute punishment without absolute certainty.

There wasn't such a thing.

Nobody with a half a brain needed an Innocence Project to teach them that lesson.

And by the time a capital case got to court, it wasn't about truth anymore, but about winning.

“It's not just the defense,” Janie said. “These people also work for the prosecution.”

“And that pisses me off, too. The DA's playing the same self-deluding game.”

Prosecutors would match defense attorneys in lying to themselves and to juries, arguing this defendant, more than the defendants doing first-degree murder sentences or life-without-parole sentences, deserved death—even when the worst of the worst never got it.

Son of Sam. Charles Manson. Jeffrey Dahmer.

Kill two. Get death.

Kill ten. Get rewarded with life for just telling the cops where all the bodies are buried.

In Donnally's experience, the more maniacal the crime, the more likely the jury would be looking for reasons why the defendant got so twisted. And once the jurors started down the psych road, it was hard for them to think of the killer as a willing, thinking, choosing human being, and that prevented them from seeing him as the murdering son of a bitch he was.

“Hamlin knew how to play these people and do a little psychological dance with them,” Janie said. “He'd drop by their office and present the case hypothetically—”

“I tried that today with Goldhagen. She wouldn't go for it.”

“All the people he hired did. He would describe the murder, straight police report kind of stuff. The blood and guts and the premeditation and planning. The psychologist would lean back in his chair and stroke his pasty chin and say, ‘I don't see anything there. That seems awfully cold-blooded. Not much chance of finding any mitigation. I'm not sure I'm in a position to assist you.'

“Then Hamlin would tell him that the defendant's mother was a dope addict, that he was abused as a kid, that his father ran off when he was two, that he got beat on the head when he was six, that he was molested by this uncle when he was ten—that kind of thing. Then the psychologist would lean forward again, furrow his brow, and say, ‘I think I was mistaken. Clearly, this is not the sort of defendant the death penalty was enacted for.' ”

“I thought shrinks were supposed to see through those kinds of games,” Donnally said, “not get self-justifications out of them.”

“All three I spoke to who'd worked for Hamlin described having to be convinced to get involved in the case, and none of them realized they were all telling the same story and confessing to the same rationalization.”

Jamie stuck a bookmark in her place and folded Lemmie's novel closed. Donnally took this as a sign she was about to hit the punch line.

“Hamlin hired one of them in a rape-murder case down in San Jose. It happened about two years ago. The defendant stalked the victim for months. At her home, at her office, even at the grocery store. She got a restraining order and the police arrested him twice for violating it. The defendant's parents were Silicon Valley, new-money types. They retained Hamlin with only one instruction. It was okay to lose in the guilt phase, they didn't care whether he got convicted of the crime, but it was a must-win at penalty phase. They weren't going to have a kid of theirs on death row and have the case coming up and coming up in the press over the next twenty years.”

“I take it that it wasn't just the victim's family who wanted what people all call closure, but the defendant's.”

Donnally hated to say the word. Closure was the concept of choice for death penalty supporters. It seemed to him minds were more like windows than doors, and a victim's family watching the execution of her murderer through the green room glass couldn't thereafter shut in, or shut out, the past.

Janie nodded. “Exactly. The case finally got to trial about four months ago. Hamlin used the guilt phase as a long sentencing hearing. He didn't argue about the facts of the crime, only used it to set up the penalty phase. He didn't object to anything the DA wanted to use in evidence; even made himself look incompetent by seeming to stumble into letting the DA's own witnesses bring in crazy stuff the defendant did that the DA hadn't known about.”

“And the DA didn't see it coming.”

“Nope. By the time the jury was done finding him guilty, they were primed for the psychologist's testimony and he wove together everything into the story Hamlin wanted to tell.”

“And the jury bought it.”

“Back in an hour with a life-without-parole sentence. The psychologist told me he foolishly showed up to hear the verdict and needed the bailiffs to escort him to his car afterwards. The victim's father and brother tried to fight their way through the phalanx of officers in order to get to him.”

“Did they bother him later?”

“A few calls and threatening notes. He got a restraining order, but he got one last call a month afterwards. A woman's voice saying that it wasn't over and he better watch his back.”

“What about—”

“And that Hamlin better watch his, too.”

Chapter 33

R
eaching for the ringing cell phone by the bedside, Donnally felt like he was fighting his way to the surface of a murky lake under a moonlit sky, except the moon was his screen. He looked at the time: 5
A.M.

“What were you doing outside of Frank Lange's house last night?”

It was Ramon Navarro and he hadn't waited for Donnally to say hello.

Donnally walked into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

“Making a dry run, it turns out. I was hoping to talk to him, but he had a party going on.”

“Talk to him about what?”

“Perjury he committed in a case.”

“That may have led someone to kill Hamlin?”

“I don't know.”

“Then what got you started—”

Donnally cut him off. “What's going on?” He didn't like getting jammed. It was time to find out why Navarro was grilling him about Lange.

“A patrol cop who's been around a long time spotted you walking across Divisadero near his house.”

“Who was that?”

“Doesn't make a difference who.”

“Then tell me.”

Donnally heard Navarro sigh. “Deondre Williams. He still has good eyes for an old guy. The only reason he recognized you is because of talk—a helluva lot of talk—in the squad room about you being the special master in the Hamlin case. There are mixed feelings about it.”

“Despite the mixed feelings, tell him to keep what he saw to himself.”

“Then tell me what you were doing there.”

Donnally headed down the stairs to the kitchen to make coffee. He was now too alert to return to sleep.

“I have dead-bang proof of Lange's perjury in a case and I'm going to use it as leverage to get him to give me information about Hamlin and the dirty stuff that might've gotten him murdered.”

“
Were
going to use it. He's toast. Roasted last night in a fire that burned down his house. He never even made it out of bed.”

Donnally stopped between steps. He thought of Lange and the woman arguing upstairs.

“Arson?”

The words must have come out more like a statement rather than a question, for Navarro asked, “Why do you say that?”

“I saw him arguing with a woman. I didn't recognize her, but I've got a photo. I'll send it to you along with the rest of the ones I took. They're from across the street and through windows so they're a little fuzzy, but maybe you can do something with them.”

“No question but it was arson,” Navarro said. “So far we've found five main points of ignition. Looks like somebody used a gas can to soak a spot on each outside wall of the house, then ran lines of fluid from one to the other. They made certain he had no way out. Everyplace he looked down, he'd see flame coming up at him.”

“That's four points.”

“The fifth was on the top floor. In his storage area. His safe and the file drawers were open and the can was lying in the middle of the floor. At least that's what the guys on the ladders are saying. We haven't been cleared to go in there yet.”

Unless Lange had left the safe open by mistake, something he wouldn't do while he was having a party, the arsonist must have been well-known enough to Lange that he would trust him—or her—with the combination.

“Looks like somebody was trying to destroy both him and his records.”

“And they did a helluva job. Victorians like Lange's are nothing but painted kindling nailed together.”

Donnally walked into the kitchen and turned on the television. A local news reporter stood across the intersection from Lange's house. Originally painted tan, the sides now were mostly black from flame and soot. All the windows visible to the camera were blown. Firefighters carrying a yellow body bag strapped to a stretcher were walking down the stairs and past Navarro, standing on the wet sidewalk among snaking fire hoses and framed by a ladder truck on one side and the medical examiner's wagon on the other.

“Is that Lange in the bag?” Donnally asked, “Or were there more victims?”

Navarro surveyed the crowd as though expecting to see Donnally among the spectators lining the far sidewalks. His eyes locked on the news camera.

“You watching on TV?”

“Yeah.”

“Just Lange. Or at least we think it's Lange. Body's burned pretty bad, but it's the right shape.”

“What about neighbors?”

Navarro pointed at the house next door. The near corner, visible in the camera frame, was blackened. “The place is being remodeled. Nobody is living there.”

Donnally watched Navarro turn toward the medical examiner's wagon as it pulled away with the body inside.

“Got to go,” Navarro said. “I'll have a look-see at the ME's office while the fire inspector does his work, then come back and go through the house if he's sure the place won't collapse on me.”

“Mind if I come along?”

“A fishing expedition?”

“Let's not call it that.”