A Criminal Defense Read Free

himself.”
    â€œThat’s a helluva leap,” Donnally said.
    Navarro ignored him. “And evidence about how he did it is probably in his office.”
    â€œProbably,” Goldhagen said. “That’s the operative word. And ‘probably’ is not probable cause, and without probable cause there’s material relating to his death in there, we don’t have the basis for a search warrant. Sounds to me like Hamlin trusted you to develop that basis in a way that protects his clients.”
    Donnally glanced over at Goldhagen. “You’ve got me confused with somebody else. I have no interest in protecting his clients.”
    â€œMaybe you don’t, but I have to and so does the court—at least until I can get them convicted. Unless we do it by the book, some of them will walk. And the public will rightfully crucify me.”
    Navarro made a show of peering at his watch by the diffused light of the cloud-curtained daybreak showing itself behind the East Bay hills.
    â€œThe clock is ticking.”
    But Donnally knew that’s not what he meant.
    The fact was that like Goldhagen, Navarro understood that from this moment, in the small town that was San Francisco, his name would be forever connected to Hamlin’s. And the detective dreaded heading into an investigation into the death of a man he despised while straitjacketed by rules that man had abused in life.

Chapter 2
    D r. Youssef Haddad pointed down at Mark Hamlin’s naked body lying covered by a plastic sheet on the stainless steel gurney in the medical examiner’s autopsy lab.
    The two gangsters whose overnight murders had delayed the forensic team’s arrival at Fort Point flanked him. Neither the humming exhaust fan nor the odor of disinfectant could suppress the stench of excrement and urine released from the bodies in death.
    â€œO propheta, certe penis tuus cælum versus erectus est.”
    â€œSorry?” Donnally glanced over at the pathologist.
    â€œO prophet, thy penis is erect unto the sky.”
    â€œA prophet or the Prophet.”
    â€œThe. According to the historian Abulfeda, the Imam Ali proclaimed it upon seeing the corpse of the Prophet Mohammed.”
    Donnally had never heard the quote before, but he’d seen the condition a few times while he was with SFPD and the name came back to him. Priapism. In homicide investigation training it had been described as a persistent erection. He couldn’t watch Viagra television commercials without thinking of its other names. When produced after execution by hanging or by strangling, it was called a death erection or angel lust.
    Although the Latin words were spoken in neither irony nor sarcasm, Donnally was surprised a Muslim doctor would even mention Mohammed in this context. Maybe he was only trying to say it was so natural even the Prophet was subject to it.
    The doctor pursed his lips and said, “Saints and sinners alike can be humiliated, even after death.”
    Haddad was one of the few pathologists Donnally had ever met who hadn’t lost or repressed his tragic sense, neither fearing it nor wearing it like a hair shirt.
    Donnally nodded toward Hamlin’s body, the sheet tented by his erection. “Premortem or post?”
    â€œThe fact that it may be post doesn’t exclude the possibility it began before he died. He might’ve taken an erectile dysfunction medication. The tox results will tell.”
    Haddad exposed Hamlin’s head and shoulders.
    â€œBut that’s not why I asked you to follow the body over here.”
    The swishing double doors announced the arrival of Detective Navarro, now dressed in surgical scrubs. His protective goggles and respirator mask, hanging by elastic straps around his neck, bounced against his chest as he crossed the room.
    Navarro nodded at Donnally as he walked up, and then grinned and said to Haddad, “Nothing like a little slice and dice in the morning.”
    The