Lemmie’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open.
Donnally could tell she was seeing something in her mind that wasn’t visible to him.
Tears formed and squeezed out onto her cheeks as she blinked.
“I’m afraid. . I’m afraid even death didn’t seem real to him until the moment he faced it himself.” She swallowed hard. “Do you. . do you think he knew he was dying?”
Donnally knew the truth. There was no reason to think Hamlin was unconscious when he was strangled. But that wasn’t the answer he chose to give.
“I don’t know,” Donnally said. “There’s no way of knowing.”
He never viewed himself as a human polygraph, but Lemmie’s last sentences had taken her off the suspects list.
Lemmie reached into her purse, withdrew a tissue, and wiped her eyes. Her voice hardened again as she asked, “Doesn’t the condition of his body mean. .”
Donnally understood she was referring to her brother’s erection and answered, “Not necessarily, that happens sometimes when a victim has been strangled. We still haven’t gotten the toxicology report, so we don’t know whether it was induced medically.”
“And you don’t know about other drugs yet, either?”
“You know something?”
“Will my parents find out?”
“That depends on where it leads. If it leads to the killer, then it will eventually come out in court. If it fades, it’ll stay with me.”
Lemmie took in a long breath and exhaled. “Mark chased the dragon.”
“Opium?”
Lemmie nodded. “Didn’t you find a long clay pipe in his apartment?”
Donnally thought for a moment. “There was a collection of them on a bookcase in his living room. Old ones, maybe even antiques.”
“Hiding in plain sight can be the best camouflage.”
“How long was he doing it?”
“Off and on for about ten years.”
“Where did he get it?”
Lemmie shrugged. “Somebody in Chinatown, I guess. Or maybe Little Saigon down in San Jose.”
Donnally pulled out his phone and called Navarro. “Did you get the tox report yet?”
“Just came in. Looks like Hamlin may have had a heroin problem. The preliminary results showed opiate metabolites in his blood. I checked the autopsy report. No track marks, so he must’ve been smoking it.”
“I think it may be opium.” He looked up at Lemmie, but said to Navarro, “Do me a favor. Hustle over to Judge McMullin and get a court order sealing the report.”
“Will do. I already told the medical examiner to hold it close because some media people have been lying in wait for it.”
“Anything else show up?”
“Alcohol. It was at.04. The blood was otherwise clean-and there’s one more thing. Dr. Haddad says it was a heart attack that actually killed him. Strangling, panic, death.”
Donnally disconnected. He decided to keep Lemmie on the drug path and not risk diverting her into speculations about the murder and to painful imaginings of her brother’s last moments.
“Did he do it alone or with other people?”
“Recently, I don’t know. When he started, it was with a private investigator he hung out with, Frank Lange. They tried it for the first time on a trip to Thailand on a case. Their client hooked them up.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“The ICE beagle at SFO sniffed out a pipe they brought back and agents questioned them for a couple of hours. I know because I was in the arrivals hall waiting. The supervisor came out and told me what the holdup was. Their story was that they bought the pipe at a souvenir shop in Bangkok. It was a lie. My brother and Frank were laughing about the whole thing as I was driving them home. It could’ve cost both of them their licenses, but they thought it was a laugh.”
“Do you know where he hid his opium?”
“I’m not sure, but he hinted once that he had a secret compartment somewhere in his bedroom.”
Chapter 29
Except for the motion and whoosh of cars and trucks, there was little change from the shadow and neon of the Backroom Bar and the night and neon of the sidewalk onto which Donnally and Lemmie stepped. It reminded Donnally of what a deceased friend used to say. Walking from a dark bar into sunlight reflecting up off concrete was like descending into hell.
The distress still showing on Lemmie’s face suggested she was stuck in purgatory, and Donnally knew he could do nothing for her. He wasn’t sure that even solving her brother’s murder would provide an escape. He thought he’d at least try to break the mood by asking her how she got her nickname.
“When we were kids, I was the adventurous one. Whenever we went someplace new, like the circus, when there was a ride to try or a high dive at the pool, I would always scream, ‘Let me, let me, let me.’ Over time, that became Lemmie.”
She paused and gazed at the oncoming traffic, seemingly oblivious to the headlights jittering on the uneven pavement and the rumble of tires. Finally, she said, “As it turned out, Mark was the aggressive one as an adult, and I’ve spent my life holed up in front of a computer monitor living the lives of imaginary people.” She half smiled. “My nickname now should be Leemee, as in leave. . me. . alone.”
“Does that include me?” Donnally asked.
She shook her head. “I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
Donnally nodded. “Have any reporters made the connection between you and your brother?”
“Not yet. My parents are refusing to talk to the press and I haven’t placed an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle. After time passes and things have died down, maybe I’ll step out of the closet on that one.”
Donnally hailed her a cab, watched it take her down toward Market Street, then turned and started back toward Hamlin’s office. He stopped with an after-work crowd at the crosswalk and waited for the switch from “Wait” to “Walk.” Most of those around him already wore their bovine BART faces, preparation for the see-nothing, hear-nothing, think-nothing, no-eye-contact commute from urban work to suburban home. Even the eyes of those texting on their cell phones seemed vacant.
He sensed people crunching up behind him, followed by jostling, then someone crowding him from behind. He felt something hard dig into the middle of his back, then a male voice with a light Vietnamese accent whispered into his ear, “Don’t move.”
A hand locked onto his left bicep.
“And don’t look around.”
Donnally pressed his right arm tight against his side so the man couldn’t too easily get to his gun, then looked down, trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s shoes and pants. Neither was what he expected. He spotted creased wool suit slacks and black alligator penny loafers, unblemished.
“Let the people pass around you.”
The signal changed.
What Donnally understood to be a gun barrel jabbed hard against his spine. He also understood that even a small caliber slug would paralyze him from that spot down to his toes. And spinning and grabbing for the gun would likely cause it to discharge into one of the pedestrians, shocking them awake from their after-work slumber just in time to watch one of them die.
He decided to do what the man said until they were in a spot that would be safer for him to make a move.
Those to the front of him stepped off the curb and into the street. The ones behind him worked their way past.
“You look at me and I might as well shoot,” the man said, once the area around them had almost cleared. “I may shoot anyway, but there’s no need to force the issue.”
As the last of the pedestrians ran to beat the light, the man said, “Keep your eyes facing the direction you’re going and turn right and head down the sidewalk. There’s a parking garage a half block up. We’re going in there.”
It was the same eighty-year-old structure where Donnally had parked his truck. He wished both that he’d paid more attention to the layout and that he’d chosen one to park in with better lighting. Walking toward it now, he imagined the third floor where he’d left the truck was more shadow than light. But, at the same time, it might not be too isolated since office workers would be coming to collect their cars for the ride home.