“How do you figure?” Donnally asked.
“We have a sophisticated accounting program, not your in-a-box, buy-it-off-the-shelf kind. We bought it to make it easy to export the financial data to Mark’s accountant so he could calculate his quarterly tax payments and prepare his returns.”
“How complicated is it?”
“Not too. I can show you how to search it and to create reports.”
Donnally wished Janie was around to sit Jackson down and take her back to the critical moments in her childhood and then return her to the present so she could understand what she was doing.
As he looked at her, he wondered whether her behavior was just an expression of grief and dislocation after the loss of a father figure, for Hamlin might have been the most important person in her life.
At the same time, maybe she’d begun to fear Hamlin, as she feared her own molesting father, even before Hamlin’s death, perhaps as though he was her own Peoples Temple Jim Jones.
“Maybe you can give me the manual to look at,” Donnally said.
Jackson straightened up, but lowered her gaze, her lips pursed into a little girl’s pout. She folded her arms below her breasts, forcing them up into the opening in her blouse, her skin reflecting the fluorescent light shining from above.
Donnally thought he had better give her some encouragement until he could figure out how to deal with her.
“After I get familiar with the program, maybe you can show me some of its tricks.”
Jackson smiled and headed back toward her desk, nearly on her toes, almost like she was skipping.
Donnally followed her and waited while she located the manual on her bookcase. He turned away after she handed it to him, but before she could offer any more help, and then took it into Hamlin’s office.
But it was hard to concentrate.
He felt like Jackson was looking over his shoulder, breathing against his ear and neck. It made him feel like she’d won a round, gotten into his head, but he wasn’t going to show it.
He found the application icon on the screen and activated the program-
And she won another round.
Jackson knew he’d need to come to her to get the password.
In order not to have to do it in person, he called her on the intercom. She insisted on coming into the office to give it to him.
Donnally rose and stood by the wall behind the desk. She slipped by him, leaned over, entered the password, and then clicked a box on the screen to make it visible: “showmethemoney.”
He didn’t need to write it down.
Jackson straightened, gave him a we’ve-got-a-secret smile, and then returned to her desk. He wasn’t sure whether the secret was the password itself or the fact that the phrase “show me the money” was at least a subliminal confession on Hamlin’s part that he’d left the greater good behind him in his race to the bank.
Or maybe the word Donnally wanted was subconscious, not subliminal, a manifestation of a professional schizophrenia.
Except that Hamlin had to have been aware of his metamorphosis from a soldier of justice into a soldier of fortune. For, eventually, even for people like Hamlin, the self-justifications have to run out.
Chapter 38
Donnally closed the office door and then sat down and called Janie. He described what he called Jackson’s “symptoms.”
“I’m thinking it’s some kind of defense mechanism,” Donnally said. “Like she’s acting out.”
Janie laughed. “Who appointed you shrink for a day? A defense mechanism, Dr. Freud?”
He knew she’d caught him. He’d felt a little awkward saying the words, like he’d been paddling into her professional pond on a makeshift raft.
“You have a better idea?”
“Transference.”
“You mean like she and Hamlin were sexually involved and she’s switched to me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she had some kind of psychological dependence on him, like a father figure.”
“I guessed at that one. At least give me a gold star for that.”
“Let’s make it a cigar, it’s more Freudian. That kind of thing happens all the time between patients and their therapists. The therapist becomes a substitute for the parent or for the abusive boyfriend and the feelings get redirected from one to the other, or from the past to the present.”
“What do you make of her acting like a sexualized little girl? Who am I supposed to be in that fantasy?”
“I wouldn’t make too much of the sexual part. It’s a weapon of the weak.” Janie paused for a moment, then said, “If you can understand the nature of the transference, what she’s trying to communicate, you’ll better understand her relationship with Hamlin.”
“And whether she’s now trying to protect him or herself?”
“Very good, Sigmund. Insights like that will make you famous someday-got to go. I have some paid shrinking to do.”
Donnally hung up, realizing that he had now crossed borders into two territories he wasn’t good at. Finance and psychology.
After gazing at the door and imagining Jackson on the other side, he decided numbers were more manageable and looked again at the monitor. He spotted a command button titled “Reports” and clicked on it. The drop-down list showed one named “Current Year-Combined.” He accessed it and discovered Hamlin didn’t have much in the way of fortune, at least in his bank accounts. The bottom-line figures for money in and money out were almost equal. Unless he owned his duplex free and clear or had investments or a retirement account, most of his assets were composed of the cash Donnally had discovered.
He opened a browser and checked San Francisco County Recorder’s and Assessor’s Office records. They showed that Hamlin had paid off the duplex he lived in six months earlier and then had transferred it into the Mark Hamlin irrevocable trust. He knew from his parents’ tax planning that making a trust irrevocable meant it couldn’t be changed without the beneficiary’s permission. Hamlin had thereby given up all control over the assets in the trust to the beneficiary. But the answer to the question of who that was didn’t show up in the online records.
Donnally wondered whether Hamlin had made the trust irrevocable because he didn’t trust himself, maybe because of his opium problem.
He checked his watch. There was enough time to make it to City Hall before it closed to try to find out who Hamlin did trust.
Later, after he’d discovered who killed Hamlin, he figured he’d also discover whether that trust was well-placed.
If his guess about the value of Hamlin’s duplex was anywhere close, whoever the beneficiary was had cleared an easy couple of million dollars the instant Hamlin’s heart seized up.
Chapter 39
When Donnally stepped out of the elevator and into the marble-floored lobby, he spotted Navarro coming in through the double front doors.
Donnally flashed a palm, holding him in place, as he approached.
“What do you have?” Donnally asked, looking down at the four-inch-thick accordion file in Navarro’s hand.
“More phone records.”
“How about walk with me over to City Hall?” Donnally pointed at the clock above the elevator doors. It showed 4:40. “I need to check something quick.”
Navarro nodded and followed Donnally out.
Donnally glanced down at the file. “Anything interesting?”
“A problem Judge McMullin may have to resolve. After getting court orders for the subscriber information for all of the phones Hamlin called and the ones that called him for the last month, I started to flowchart the calls. But I had to stop.”
“Because they were telling you too much?”
“Exactly. I may be drifting into attorney-client areas.”