The door to the conference room was closed when he walked in. He could make out women’s voices inside. He wondered whether Ryvver had decided to come to him, better to seek him out than to wait for him to knock on her door.
Donnally eased the latch closed so that if his opening of the door hadn’t already given him away, the closing of it wouldn’t. He crept over and listened. The voice now speaking was Jackson’s. There were pauses and sniffling. She was talking about the night Bumper was murdered in his bed and about feeling later that Hamlin had rescued her. Then Hamlin going wrong. And her anger and her feeling trapped by him and her past. The tale coming in a rush. It sounded like she was climbing a mountain of hurt and shame, ready to roll down the other side, maybe all the way to a confession to having killed Hamlin in a rage.
Finally, Jackson, now full-on weeping, saying, “He didn’t deserve to die.”
The other voice, even, professional. Janie’s. “You sound like you feel guilty about it.”
Fists pounding the table, like a little kid kicking at something in frustration.
Donnally wondered why Janie was in there, or even at the office. It was still a half hour until their dinner date. Had she come early hoping Jackson would tell her what she had wanted to say before she ran away last time? Knowing Janie, her gentleness and sincerity, it wasn’t hard to imagine a conversation flowing into a therapy session.
It had happened enough to him.
“Ryvver wouldn’t have known about Camacho if I hadn’t told her,” Jackson said, “and if he hadn’t found out what happened to him, he wouldn’t have killed Mark.”
“Why did you tell her?”
“I was angry. Angry as she was over Little Bud killing himself. He was such a sweet, harmless man. And so kind to Ryvver even at her worst, when she was the most lost and out of control, when there was nothing I could do for her. It just slipped out. And she. .”
“She what?”
“She knew from when she worked for her father what Frank and Mark and Reggie Hancock were up to. Or least guessed at it.”
“And you gave her confirmation.”
“I had just figured it out myself. Harlan thinks I knew everything that Mark was doing all along, but I didn’t.”
“Did you confront Mark about it?”
Jackson didn’t respond, at least aloud. Maybe she shook her head. Maybe she nodded. Donnally had no way of knowing.
Janie changed the subject, so the answer must have been no. “Were you going to tell Harlan?”
“I told him about Little Bud.”
“Everything?”
Silence. A long silence.
Donnally heard wood scraping wood, maybe chair legs on the floor. He crept toward Hamlin’s inner office, wincing at the faint squeaks of the old parquet flooring. Then the click of heels, but not getting closer like she was walking toward the door. Pacing. Had to be Jackson. Janie always wore flats. He decided he didn’t want to take the chance of getting caught eavesdropping, so he continued into Hamlin’s office and sat down behind his desk.
A tap on the keyboard revealed the desktop under the screensaver. He clicked on the accounting program icon and entered the “showmethemoney” password.
Looking past the monitor as the program loaded, at the chairs in front of the desk and the couch under the window, he felt the history of the last few days.
Lemmie and her parents playing out the family drama against the background of a real tragedy.
Jackson imagining herself a Jonestown victim, first guilt-ridden for having survived and now for having broken free.
Galen cutting a deal, with Navarro watching him like a visible conscience.
Galen.
Donnally still didn’t know whether the man had intended to kill himself or whether his collapse into a coma was an accident of misunderstood medication. He would’ve heard from Edwards by now if the Berkeley detective had found anything suggesting it had been an attempted murder.
Donnally pushed the mouse up to the top of the screen, and clicked on the “Reports” tab. He ran the same one as last time, “Current Year-Combined,” and looked for categories that might cover informant payments, checks coming in from the government, and then cash or checks going out to Hancock and the informing clients. He was certain it wouldn’t be called by a recognizable name. And it wasn’t. He tried “Fees,” “Retainers,” “Services,” “Consulting,” “Salaries,” “Bonuses,” “Royalties,” even “Other” on the income side and “Commissions,” “Professional Services,” and “Wages” on the outgoing side. Nothing. Not a hint.
He stilled the keys, listening for sounds from the conference room. After waiting a full thirty seconds, but hearing none, he reached for the accounting program manual and checked the table of contents and the index, looking for a gimmick that would guide him to where he needed to go.
But then a thought interjected itself between his eyes and the page.
Soon as they come out, they’ll guess I heard them in there.
His mind drifted from the book on the desk in front of him to an image of the two women talking together in the conference room. But there was nothing he could do but try to catch a cue from Janie about how he should act when they came out, if there was a way. He suspected that for Jackson exiting the conference room would feel like leaving a shadowed confessional in which one admits, one repents, and one is forgiven, and then steps back out into the glare of an unforgiving world that judges anew and penalizes, and in which the past is never past.
Another picture replaced that one. Jackson standing in the office in her low-cut sweater, reaching for his arm. He wondered whether Janie had found a way to confront Jackson about her attempt at sexualized manipulation and find an explanation in her childhood. But maybe she didn’t need to. Guilt and shame for inadvertently setting up Mark Hamlin would have been impetus enough.
The conference room door opened. Donnally watched Jackson walk out of his view and toward her desk, heels clicking on the floor like a metronome, her neck rigid, face forward, knowing he was watching her. He heard her desk drawer open and close, then the office door open and close.
Janie appeared in the doorway and came toward him.
“How much did you hear?” Janie asked.
“Did she know I was listening?”
“I don’t know. She knew you were in the office, but over her crying I’m not sure she could tell when you arrived.”
“So it all could’ve been a performance?”
“I don’t think so. What you heard was the second time through, a more chronological account. She’d already done a scattershot of bits and pieces.”
She dropped onto the couch.
“I didn’t expect it. At least not this way. Not after she ran away last time. It was like she couldn’t help herself. Needed just to let it out. It blew me away.” She released a breath. “She felt all this pressure building up from you being here all the time. I think I was partly a proxy for you. She won’t ever admit it, but I think she wanted you to hear what she was saying.”
Janie leaned back and closed her eyes for a few moments, then opened them and said, “She’d come to hate Hamlin. Really hate him. I got the feeling that what her father had done to her sexually, Hamlin had done to her intellectually and emotionally, and she didn’t recognize it as abuse until way, way, way too late.”
Chapter 50
I just got a heads-up the feds have a wiretap on Camacho and all his people,” Navarro told Donnally in a late night call. “Our narcotics task force is staffing the wire room and doing some of the surveillances.”
Donnally covered the speaker and whispered, “Navarro” to Janie across the kitchen table. She set her spoon and chopsticks down alongside her takeout beef noodle soup.
“You mean the DEA thinks Camacho is double dealing?”