Donnally pushed aside the memory and worked his way back to where their conversation had started, with Jackson and what had connected her to Mark Hamlin, where it began, how it grew, its character just before his death and whether it might have transformed afterward.

“What you’re saying,” Donnally said, “is that I need to understand Jackson’s transition from victim of a police crime into . . .” He spread open his hands on the table. “Into what?”

“Someone whose identity was somehow tied to Hamlin’s ends-justifies-the-means mentality.”

Donnally had the feeling Janie was right. That could be the reason why Jackson could be terrified of being prosecuted for the illegal means Hamlin had chosen, but could still be loyal to him.

“Even though,” Donnally said, “whatever ends were hers over the twenty years she was with him may not have been his anymore when he died.”

“But I suspect that she doesn’t quite see it yet. And if you push her too hard, she’ll never let herself see it. It would be just too terrifying.”

Chapter 14

The note on Donnally’s windshield had read:

We decided to flatten only one tire so you could use your spare to get yourself out of town. Next time . . .

Donnally hadn’t noticed the listing right rear end of his truck when he walked out of the house and into the predawn shadows at 7 A.M. He felt a surge of anger as he examined the tire under the streetlight and realized that he’d overlooked a ground rule when he met with Judge McMullin. Who was going to pay for the damage.

The note was still pinned under his wiper blade. Four thoughts came to him as he retrieved it.

The first was that whoever left it probably wrote for a living. They didn’t split the infinitive and they knew how to use an ellipsis.

The second was that he wished Hamlin’s friends and enemies would stop leaving notes.

The third was that the absent words “Fuck you, asshole” meant that the author probably hadn’t been one of Hamlin’s clients.

The fourth was that the “we” was really an “I.”

Twenty minutes later, Donnally had changed the tire and was driving toward Hamlin’s office. He parked in an underground garage up the block, then walked over and waited for Takiyah Jackson behind a pillar by the building entrance.

Donnally spotted her coming down the sidewalk before she noticed him. He stepped toward the brass and glass door as if he was just arriving, then looked back as she made the turn, and smiled.

“Good timing,” Donnally said.

Jackson didn’t smile back. She pointed upward, toward the higher floors. “You setting up shop?”

“Might as well. Looks like I’ll be in town awhile. Can I buy you some coffee?”

“I thought you cops liked to start the grilling cold, then offered coffee as a pretended act of friendship to fudge up a little warm feeling in the interrogation room.”

“Crooks never fell for that except on television. I always relied on charm.”

Jackson rolled her eyes. “I’ll take the coffee instead.”

They turned together and walked to the Starbucks on the corner. She ordered regular house blend. He ordered the same out of solidarity, otherwise he would’ve gotten the decaf. He’d learned over the years that it wasn’t enough just to break bread, but you had to break the same bread, or to drink the same coffee.

Sometimes he didn’t want to try to rely on charm alone, and this was one of those times.

Jackson raised her cup in what Donnally took to be a silent toast to Hamlin, then they both took sips and headed back out the door.

“Mark must have really trusted you,” Donnally said as they headed back up the sidewalk.

“How do you figure?”

“We found your fingerprints on the cash in his safe.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t have trusted me. How do you know I didn’t reach in and grab some for myself?”

Donnally glanced over at her and smiled. “A do-it-yourself severance package?”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve been around long enough, seen enough screw-ups by crooks, to have learned how to cover your tracks by wearing gloves.”

“You find anyone else’s prints?”

“Yes.”

Jackson stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing Donnally to stop and face her. Office workers brushed by them, some making a point of bumping their shoulders. Donnally pointed toward the front window of a copy service and they stepped over to it.

“It really wasn’t a yes or no question,” Jackson said.

“How about you tell me whose prints they are.”

“It’s better if you take the lead. I’m not gonna snitch on anybody.”

“Even if they did something wrong?”

“Who am I to judge? People make mistakes.”

“Like Sheldon Galen?”

Jackson took in a long breath and looked past Donnally up the sidewalk. He noticed part of what had made him think of Angela Bassett when he’d first looked at her. The severity of her nose and cheeks and her eyes, less windows than screens. He wondered whether over the years her face had become her or she had become her face.

Finally, Jackson exhaled and said, “That’s a complicated one. Sheldon showed up a while back all tense and excited. Really pressured, like there was a lot on the line. Him and Mark talked in the office for a long time and then Mark cleaned out the safe and gave him all the cash inside. They were in such a tizzy I thought maybe they’d landed a big case and Mark was giving him his cut upfront.”

“That matches what I’ve heard,” Donnally said. “That Mark often hired Galen to work on cases with him. But I’m not sure how money with Galen’s fingerprints ended up in Mark’s safe. It should’ve been all outgoing, and none incoming.”

“That’s not the end of the story.”

Jackson took a sip of her coffee. Donnally thought she was buying time to decide how much of the tale to tell. He didn’t imagine he’d get the whole thing. Jackson wasn’t there yet.

“A week later the money was back. I asked Mark about it. He told me it was some kind of loan. I flashed on how Sheldon acted when he came for it and realized what I was prepared to see as tension and excitement because of all the cases they’d worked on over the years might have been desperation.”

“And when the cash showed up again?”

“I figured that Sheldon had returned the money, or at least part of it.”

“How much?”

“I think about eighty thousand dollars.”

“Why do you think it was Sheldon?”

“There were a bunch of conference calls the day before. Sheldon, Mark, and a bunch of the lawyers in The Crew.”

“The Crew?”

“A group of old lefty lawyers from the sixties and seventies. I got the feeling they took up a collection so Sheldon could pay Mark back, because the money showed up right afterwards.”

“Is that the same money that I took out of the safe yesterday?”

“Some.” Jackson stared past Donnally again, but this time her eyes didn’t seem to register the commuter traffic on the street or the office workers rushing by. Whatever she was seeing was playing out in her head.

After a few moments, she looked back at Donnally.

“Sheldon is a weasel. He graduated from NYU law school and worked as a court-appointed lawyer back there for a couple of years. Why he showed up in San Francisco, I don’t know. But he knew how to talk the talk, how to pump up his credibility. It was all about how he’d represented terrorism suspects and about all his trial victories. It was all bullshit. He only represented terrorism suspects because they couldn’t afford their own lawyers and the federal judges needed attorneys who’d work cheap.”

“How’d you find out the truth about him?”

“Him and Mark did a heroin importation case back there a couple of years ago. They were brought in by a local lawyer. I talked to her paralegal. She told me all his money came from CJA.”