At the same time, Donnally was grateful for that hate, even though it had been sublimated into humor, for it seemed better than the brute reductionism of the medical examiner’s office by which still-warm humans devolved into mere fields of evidence.

Now conscious of the war between the odors of the lab and the aroma of lavender surrounding the body, Donnally realized something didn’t make sense.

“There seems to be a contradiction,” Donnally said. “Someone was rational and methodical enough to destroy evidence by washing him off, but irrational enough to think that the dead could be humiliated by being left hanging half naked in a public place.”

Donnally tensed, ready to be annoyed when Navarro took another sarcastic swing, but he didn’t.

“Unless the humiliation was directed at someone else,” Navarro said. “Maybe as a warning.”

There was a new seriousness in Navarro’s voice, as though he worked his way past the filter of how he’d despised Hamlin in life in order to analyze the manner in which he had died and had been left to be discovered.

“His being dead ought to have been warning enough,” Haddad said. “But then again, my part in the process has less to do with the psychology of homicide and more to do with the pathology of death.” He gestured toward the body. “I only interrogate the dead.”

Donnally looked from Hamlin to Haddad. “And you’re sure it’s saying homicide?”

Haddad pulled off the sheet and pointed at abrasions on Hamlin’s right wrist.

“It certainly crossed my mind that he tied his own hands to keep himself from changing his mind,” Haddad said. “But at least one factor mitigates against that.” He cocked his head toward pieces of a mountain climber’s rope bagged up on top of a utility table. “The knot was in a spot where he couldn’t have tied it.”

“You mean, by himself?”

“Exactly. By himself.”

“So there’s no way it’s suicide?” Navarro asked.

“Not based on this.”

The following silence told Donnally their minds were leading them to the last possibility, that Hamlin’s death might have been a sexual homicide, an unintentional erotic asphyxiation at the hands of a partner.

And when Donnally finally said, “Either he had an enemy or he had a helper,” they all knew what he meant.

As they stood looking at the body, Donnally felt as though Hamlin’s history, outside of just the mechanics of how he’d come to this place, was now catching up to him and was verging on a future that lay in their hands.

Who Hamlin would be in the public mind and how he would live on in his family’s memories might be determined in the next few minutes.

Donnally thought of the reporters waiting in the medical examiner’s lobby, with voice recorders and video cameras ready, waiting to draw conclusions about Hamlin’s life and character from the manner in which he died. Donnally wasn’t a Buddhist, but, for the moment, an anonymous death leading toward eternal oblivion seemed a more preferable route to travel than the path someone had chosen for Hamlin.

Donnally felt Navarro’s eyes on him, as though the detective was saying, You do it. You release it to the press. Tell them about the condition of his body, his angel lust. Prove to the public you have no interest in protecting Hamlin, or at least that saving his reputation wasn’t the reason Hamlin chose you.

He stared back at Navarro, as though to say, You do it. You couldn’t expose Hamlin in life, so take a shot at him now, when he can’t answer, when you’ll have the last word. Prove to the public Hamlin was reckless beyond just the immorality and illegality of his law practice, and all the way beyond the limits of life itself.

Haddad cleared his throat.

Donnally and Navarro both blinked. Neither one was willing to play that game.

Chapter 3

We need some ground rules,” Presiding Judge Raymond McMullin said as he leaned forward in his high-backed leather chair and hunched over his desk.

Donnally and Navarro had observed the autopsy just long enough to confirm Hamlin had been strangled from behind rather than asphyxiated by the rope by which he was hanging, and then walked over to the Superior Court to meet District Attorney Hannah Goldhagen in chambers when the judge arrived at 8 A.M.

During his detective years, Donnally always liked bringing search and arrest warrants to McMullin, always learned something new about the law and about the gap that too often separated the form of justice from its substance in practice, and the ideal of justice from the institutions in which it was supposed to be accomplished. For McMullin, the tragedy of the law and the heartbreak of his life as a judge was his inability to close all those gaps and to prevent the free fall of victims, witnesses, and defendants into them, and he’d never been afraid to admit it, even to a cop half his age.

It had always seemed to Donnally that McMullin was a throwback, reincarnated from a world that existed early in the previous century. He was a judge because someone in his family always had to become a judge, like an old Irish family in which one son always had to become a priest. And since Donnally had been retired out of SFPD, McMullin had aged into the most senior, the monsignor to the Hall of Justice’s priestly class.

McMullin pointed at Goldhagen. “I don’t want you to use this investigation as a fishing expedition, a device to reexamine and reopen all of Mark Hamlin’s old cases.”

Goldhagen sat up, her back arched as though about to protest.

McMullin held up his palm toward her.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to do it if I were in your place. There are countless times when I wished I could’ve gotten him prosecuted for obstruction of justice. But he was too slick and always found ways to slip by.”

Goldhagen sat back.

The judge gestured toward the hallway. “The stunt he pulled last week was disgusting, but none of those gangsters would admit he put them up to it.”

“What if he”—Goldhagen glanced at Donnally—“comes across evidence of crimes that can still be prosecuted, like against some of the private investigators Hamlin used to do his dirty work?”

“That’s a hypothetical you won’t have to face. He”—now McMullin looked at Donnally—“won’t. Hamlin wasn’t stupid enough to leave that kind of trail.”

Donnally didn’t like being talked about in the third person, as though he was a dog or an Alzheimer’s patient incapable of exercising his own judgment.

“That gives us rule number one,” Donnally said. “Based on what I find, I’ll decide whether something should be referred for prosecution.”

Now all eyes turned toward him.

“And rule number two, I’ll take Detective Navarro along whenever I can.” Donnally glanced over at Goldhagen and pointed with his thumb toward Navarro. “He’ll work with you to get whatever search warrants we need.”

“So far, so good,” McMullin said, then smiled. “Don’t I get to . . .”

Donnally nodded and spread his hands to take in the wood-paneled chambers. “You’re the one in charge.”

McMullin shifted his gaze toward Goldhagen. “I’m very concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. The public might view your office as more interested in getting even than seeing justice done.”

Goldhagen reddened, and they all understood why. After a series of district attorneys that had been perceived by the press as defense attorneys in the guise of prosecutors—who never sought the death penalty in murder cases, who never moved to deport immigrant felons, who never prosecuted marijuana grow operations—she’d run as a prosecutor’s prosecutor in what had been, since the Barbary Coast days, a lawless and disordered town.