Donnally took in a long breath and exhaled. He had nothing good to say about Hamlin, and therefore nothing to supplement the standard condolences that were due a grieving family.
The moment he reached the door he grasped that not all the family members were grieving.
Hamlin’s parents sat in chairs facing the desk.
His sister stood next to the couch, looking out the window at the brick facade of the building across the street, poised like a tourist guessing at the type of architecture or an artist deciding whether a scene is worth painting.
They all turned toward him as he crossed the threshold.
Donnally introduced himself and expressed his sympathies. He didn’t want to be seen as supplanting their son and brother by sitting behind Hamlin’s desk, so he pulled a chair away from a wall and placed it so it formed a semicircle with the couch and the chairs in which the parents sat. He waited until Lemmie took a seat on the couch, then sat down.
On his second look he recognized Lemmie. He’d seen her photo on the backs of best sellers that had migrated on and then off Janie’s nightstand over the years. She appeared to be at least ten years younger than her brother. He didn’t find it surprising that he’d run into a writer during the investigation. Writers crowded San Francisco the way actors crowded LA and painters crowded New York. He just hadn’t connected the Hamlin last name from her to her brother. Maybe because she was always referred to in conversation and in the press by her first name alone.
Under Janie’s prodding, he’d tried to read one of Lemmie’s novels, but got through only ten or twelve pages, put off by too many adjectives and adverbs and everything being said sweetly, or intriguingly, or bewilderingly.
As he put the book down for the final time, Janie said, “Too girlie, huh?”
Donnally figured he’d be safer by answering with a shrug.
After that, Janie came to accept that Donnally was a noun-and-verb kind of guy. And that had shown in his work. When he was a patrol sergeant, he’d made an officer remove the word “brutally” from a report of a stabbing in the Pink Palace, asking if a single stab wound was brutal, what was a dismemberment or a stabbing followed by a rape?
And sitting with the parents and sister of Mark Hamlin, he found it hard to imagine that any literary flourish or device could add to the knowledge they shared about his death.
Rope.
Tied.
Hung.
Strangled.
Dead.
And, worst of alclass="underline"
Erection.
“We got into town from Boston this morning to help Marian with the funeral arrangements,” Matthew Hamlin said.
The family’s naming scheme hit Donnally when the father said the name Marian. Matthew, Mark, and Marian.
Donnally’s own father, Donald Harlan, Sr. had also imposed a naming scheme on his children. Donald, Jr. and Donnally. And it had been part of Donnally’s rebellion to reverse his name, from Donnally Harlan to Harlan Donnally, in order to disguise his connection to his father.
He wondered whether Marian’s adoption of the name Lemmie was part of hers.
“And to find out where you stand in the investigation,” Lemmie said, leaning forward on the couch.
Lemmie sounded more like a reporter asking a question than a mourning sister. It was the sort of tone that can turn a family member from source of information into a suspect, like a husband seeming too interested in the mechanics of how his wife died or a son too anxious for the police to take the yellow tape off his elderly parent’s front door and release the crime scene.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you any of the details of the investigation,” Donnally said. “The court appointed me special master so that means-”
“Do you have any leads?”
Matthew glared at her. “Let the man talk.”
Lemmie pulled back as though evading a punch.
Donnally was surprised by the force of the old man’s personality. He had to be in his late eighties, an age when most parents have long since begun deferring to their children, sometimes even their grandchildren.
His wife looked down and twisted a tissue in her hands.
“It’s all right,” Donnally said, focusing on Matthew, and feeling Lemmie’s role in his mind shift from murder suspect to domestic victim. “I understand. What happened to Mark is bad enough, it’s far worse when you don’t know why or who did it.” He looked at Lemmie. “We’re pursuing some information we’ve received.” Then back toward Matthew. “This is a complicated situation since my work may involve attorney-client matters in the sense that-”
Now Matthew cut in. “No need to explain. I practiced law for over fifty years, young man.”
Donnally felt his face warm. He expected, or maybe hoped, Matthew’s wife would reach over and pat his hand and say, Now, dear. But she didn’t stir and didn’t raise her head. She seemed to withdraw inside herself, and it seemed like a practiced move. He suspected he had discovered a clue about why Mark Hamlin had authority problems, seemed to view all authority as an enemy to be subverted or overcome, but his focus at the moment wasn’t to solve that mystery. It was to solve another one.
“Then you’ll understand why I have to be even more careful in what I say, even to family members, than I might be in another investigation.”
“What assurance do we have that you’re capable of this kind of investigation at all?” Matthew tilted his head toward the reception area behind him. “My son never seemed to be able to surround himself with competent people, and the press keeps hinting about some mysterious link between you and Mark.”
Lemmie made a movement as if she intended to interject herself on behalf of Donnally or apologize for her father’s rudeness, but then sat back, the gesture orphaned in the silent office. Donnally suspected if it hadn’t been her brother’s death that had brought her into this room with her parents, she might’ve expressed what was on her mind.
Donnally recounted his background, his single contact with Hamlin after he left police work, and how it was that he came to be chosen by Judge McMullin. He was in the odd and uncomfortable position of having to minimize his connection with their son even more than it was in order to buttress his own credibility. Lemmie’s downcast eyes told him she also understood and felt the sad irony.
Matthew seized the opportunity supplied by Donnally’s offering of his thumbnail biography to offer his own. Once a name partner in Boston’s largest civil firm, he had represented most major U.S. airlines and pharmaceutical companies, and had served as ambassador to Ireland under Ronald Reagan. After that, he worked as an informal adviser to George H. W. Bush, and then retired from politics after the election of, in his words, “that son of a bitch Bill Clinton.”
Until that moment, Donnally had assumed Lemmie had picked her parents up at the airport and had driven them to the office. He now imagined there was a limousine double-parked around the corner, and he wished they were already in it and driving away.
“When is the funeral?” Donnally asked, trying to transition the conversation toward their exit.
“We’ll have a service here in a few days,” Lemmie said, “then they. . we. . will take his body back to Boston for the burial.”
Lemmie said the word “we” in a way that suggested she’d already prepared her living will and it specified that there would be no Marian next to Matthew and Mark in the family plot.
“I assume you’ll have someone there to videotape the attendees,” Matthew said.
Her hand shot out. “Please stop, Father. He knows how to do his job.”
“I had intended to,” Donnally said, “and expect to be there myself.”
Donnally and Lemmie rose, and after a moment’s hesitation, the parents did also.
As he walked them to the elevator, he overheard Lemmie tell her parents she had an appointment and would meet them at their hotel. From the incline of her head and the lean in her body, Donnally felt a kind of tension being broadcast toward him.