“I’m not sure. Neighbors heard two explosions that could have come from gasoline on the top two floors being ignited by the flames coming from below.”
Donnally gazed at the blown windows. “Lange must’ve been really dead to the world to have not woken up to that.”
Navarro looked at his watch.
“Maybe by now the medical examiner has figured out how dead.”
Chapter 35
Donnally’s experience working with informants and cooperating defendants like Sheldon Galen was that they told the truth at the beginning because they were shaken at having been caught and gave themselves confidence by acting childishly earnest.
Later, they would angle off course into lying out of fear or shame or the need to protect others and the need to protect themselves from accusations, and self-accusations, of snitching.
By then, the mental balance had shifted and the nightmare of public humiliation seemed less terrifying than spending a few years in jail.
In the end, they all had to be straightened out by threats and promises.
One look at Galen’s pale face and his overactive tongue and lips as he walked into Hamlin’s office confirmed for Donnally he was at stage one.
Because of Lange’s death, Donnally hadn’t been sure he would be. Although Lu hadn’t released his arson theory to the press, Donnally suspected Galen felt like a metal duck at a carnival arcade, the two ahead of him, Hamlin and Lange, having already been flattened and him moving into the shooter’s crosshairs, with a lot more at stake than an oversized teddy bear.
Donnally decided to hit Galen hard and in rapid fire to get what he could before this already twisted and squirming man slithered into stage two. The most important thing was to keep from fuzzying the focus by letting Galen drift into speculations about what had happened to Lange, and why, until he’d gotten what he needed about Hamlin.
Galen reached into his inside suit jacket pocket and withdrew a packet of tri-folded papers. He slid it across the desk and said, “Goldhagen said I should give you this.”
Donnally knew what it was, but he unfolded it and read it anyway to make sure there was nothing that contradicted what he thought had been their understanding. After finding nothing troubling, he slid it into a folder.
“Will she. .” Galen said, glancing behind him toward the closed door leading to the outer office.
“Jackson won’t see it and she won’t know about it. To her it’ll just look like you’re Hamlin’s friend trying to help find out who killed him.”
“You sure she’ll believe that?”
“She know something you’re worried about?”
As soon as he said the words and watched Galen’s face assume a gazing-into-the-abyss expression, he knew he’d asked the wrong question.
“Don’t answer that,” Donnally said. “Let’s get down to business.”
Donnally slid a legal pad onto the blotter. The first page was blank. Concealed underneath was a list of questions he intended to start with.
He read down it, then asked, “Were you involved in the People v. Thule case, the walkway collapse?”
Galen swallowed. “I helped out on a lot of cases. Mark was brilliant in trial, but not so good in preparation. He’d let things slide and slide and it would get him into jams that were tough to get out of, so I did a lot of the pretrial work.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Galen nodded.
“And you knew about Hamlin turning in the federal judge who lied about watching his sister get killed?”
Galen nodded again.
Donnally looped back. “And you brought in Frank Lange to do the John Gordon interview.”
A flicker of Galen’s eyelids told Donnally he’d got it right.
“Are you telling me it was the surviving victims in the case who murdered Frank?”
“I don’t know that anyone murdered him. We haven’t excluded any possibilities.”
Donnally reached into the middle desk drawer and pulled out the DVD of Lange’s interview of Gordon, laid it on the blotter, and turned it toward Galen.
“I never listened to it,” Galen said. “And I didn’t prepare Lange for his testimony. He knew what he was supposed to do and he did it.”
“And you knew he committed perjury.”
“That was between him and Mark.”
Donnally let his hand settle on the folder containing the cooperation agreement.
Galen’s gaze followed. He took in a long breath and said, “Shit. . son of a bitch. . Yes. I knew he committed perjury.”
“Did any of the victims threaten you?”
“They had no way of knowing I was involved in the trial. I was just a face in the gallery when the verdict was read. And frankly, they weren’t the type to kill anyone. The only kind of threats that Easter shoppers like those people make are threats to sue. It wouldn’t cross their minds to hurt someone. And if it did, they would’ve taken out Thule, not me or Mark.”
Donnally flipped to the second page of his pad and, while making a checkmark, said in a casual way that didn’t reveal he was assuming and asserting facts that would never be in evidence in any court, “Were you supposed to get a cut of the money Mark took out of David Burger’s motorcycle repair shop in Oakland?”
Galen didn’t hesitate in responding. One reminder of the cooperation agreement had been enough. “I did some of the trial prep, but he kept my share for working on the case as what he called ‘interest’ on the hundred grand he loaned me to cover what I took from my trust account.”
Now Donnally looked up. “Like you were an indentured servant?”
“Let’s just call it pro bono.” Galen didn’t smile.
“Did the victim’s people come after Hamlin? Maybe Tub or Sanders’s wife.”
“That Tub is an asshole. He was big in the Oakland Hell’s Angels chapter until he got caught skimming dope money and they stripped off his patches and kicked him out. Have you seen him?”
Donnally nodded.
“Meth cost him his house and about a hundred pounds of fat and muscle. You bet he wants the money, all of it, both shares. He knows Burger killed his brother-in-law in self-defense-even Sanders’s wife believes that. Sanders had gotten all paranoid and crazy and had taken to pounding her, too. Burger killing Sanders probably saved her life. If Tub wasn’t always chasing meth and desperate for cash, he’d say Burger deserved the money so he could hire Hamlin to help him beat the case.”
“Did you ever witness Tub-”
Galen nodded. “Out there on Harrison Street, behind the Hall of Justice, under the freeway. We were walking up to Mark’s car after court. Tub must’ve scouted out the place and hidden down the block. He comes riding up with a couple of guys from the East Bay Devils, leathered up like they were heading for the Fourth of July outlaw rally in Hollister. They all pull guns-right behind the police department. I looked over my shoulder and could see cops getting in and out of their patrol cars. Tub says, ‘Look over there one more time and it’ll be the last thing you see.’ Then Hamlin told him he’d get the money, just needed some time, a week. One of the bikers climbs off his motorcycle and punches Mark in the gut. He doubles over, but doesn’t go down to the pavement. Nothing else said. And they’re back on their bikes and gone.”
“Did Mark pay them?”
“I don’t know. He was supposed to. I collected some cash from clients who owed me and gave him ten thousand.”
Donnally thought of the currency with Galen’s fingerprints on it and the other stash they found under Hamlin’s bed. It struck him that Galen’s relationship with Hamlin was like a sick marriage, the kind in which they go after each other with knives, then turn together against the cops or the relatives or the neighbors who arrive to intervene.
“Isn’t that a little peculiar?” Donnally asked. “Mark extorts money out of you and you try to save him from Tub.”
“I’ve got a big mortgage, and forty percent of my income came from Mark. I needed to keep him in business. I knew he was under financial pressure, too. He always spent every nickel he made. That was part of what was driving him, and he would’ve made it up to me in the end.”