Night Is the Hunter (13 page)

W
here are you?” Donnally asked Judge McMullin over his cell phone, waiting in the foyer of McMullin's mansion in Pacific Heights.

“Shoot, I should've called you. I had to stay late in chambers to read and sign some search warrants.”

“How long . . .”

“Twenty minutes.”

Donnally knew McMullin was lying about why he hadn't shown up, but he didn't confront him, just disconnected the call. The housekeeper had already told him McMullin had come home early, planning to meet Donnally, but had left to go out for dinner. She'd assumed McMullin had either canceled or had moved the meeting to the restaurant or to another time altogether.

He wondered whether McMullin had been subconsciously avoiding him, maybe feeling silly he had involved Donnally in what Grassner had suspected. That the whole thing was about nothing more than a judge getting queasy when forced to face the mortal consequence of a decision.

But standing just inside the judge's door, Donnally wondered whether what he was really searching for was a way to relieve
McMullin of responsibility, find something the judge could use to excuse or justify himself.

Then a sudden, tense, sour, self-accusatory moment.

Why was he willing to do this for McMullin, but not for his own father?

The answer came to him just as fast.

While his father had always hidden from the truth and then finally revealed it only on his own terms, McMullin was not afraid to risk putting his career and reputation on the line for the sake of the truth, and on Donnally's terms, and at the risk of public exposure of his weaknesses and failings either at the time of the trial or now, or both.

Donnally heard a phone ring in the house. Thirty seconds later the housekeeper reappeared and directed him into the judge's first-floor study. As he entered, he found the room reminded him that McMullin had a heritage that extended back through generations in San Francisco. The Gold Rush, the Barbary Coast, the Great Earthquake, the 1936 World's Fair, the building of the cross-bay bridges. The city's history was his family's history.

Portraits on the wood-paneled walls showed his ancestors posing in this same mansion, or cutting ribbons at City Hall, or giving electioneering speeches in Union Square. Hanging between them were plaques and gavels from civic organizations, city councils, and state and federal courts displaying a history of civic duty.

Glancing around, Donnally guessed that the Georgian desk and block-front chests and hutches had probably been shipped around Cape Horn from Boston during the early part of the nineteenth century, back when his Irish relatives were indentured sailors, maybe even laboring on those same ships.

But despite the feeling of permanence and solidity and binding to the past, it reminded Donnally of something else. That McMullin was the last of his line. Widowed, no children, no brothers or sisters, and cousins probably too far removed to matter.

Donnally turned as McMullin entered the study. The judge tossed his overcoat onto the couch and walked over and shook Donnally's hand. The still-shiny grease stain on the judge's tie proved what his housekeeper had told him was true; he'd gone out to dinner, not worked in his chambers.

Donnally decided not to confront him. There was nothing to be gained, for nothing had been lost but a few minutes.

On the other hand, maybe something had been gained, some evidence of the deterioration of the judge's mind.

A half hour after they sat down, Donnally finished his report of what he'd learned and what he'd done.

As he watched the judge looking over the notes he'd taken of their conversation, Donnally thought back on something McMullin had said sitting by the Smith River.

I think I thought he was guilty of at least second-degree murder.

I think I thought.

It almost sounded like part of a child's nursery rhyme.

I think I thought. I think I thought. I think I thought.

Donnally watched the judge reading, adding words or phrases, underlining sentences. It was as though McMullin was alone in the room, his concentration isolating him from his surroundings.

His mind returned to a call he'd made to the judge from the federal archive.

“Did you check with the clerk about whether there are any sealed notes in the file?”

The judge gave him a blank look.

Donnally felt a rumble of frustration. The judge had forgotten to ask. There was no point in showing his annoyance and embarrassing the judge, so he said, “Let's check together tomorrow.”

The judge nodded, then his brows furrowed. “I thought you were done with this. Isn't that the point of this meeting?”

“That's what I thought, too. But I'd like to see if there are any leads left to follow.”

In fact, he only wanted to find out whether he'd wasted his time, time that would've been better spent trying to ascertain his father's actual mental state.

“The court clerk's office opens at 8:00
A.M.
Why don't you come by my chambers at 8:15?”

D
onnally arrived at the door to Judge McMullin's chambers in the Hall of Justice at 7:55.

McMullin stepped out of the elevator halfway down the hallway four minutes later.

“You're early,” McMullin said, walking up.

The defensive edge in McMullin's voice made him sound as though he'd intercepted the judge on his way to commit a burglary.

Donnally handed him one of the two cups of coffee he'd purchased at the café across the street.

“There are some things I need to take care of in L.A. in the next few days, so I thought I'd get an early start here in case we find something today to go on.”

McMullin gave him a narrow-eyed gaze as though he wasn't sure whether to believe Donnally, then turned away and unlocked the door.

And Donnally wasn't sure he believed himself.

Donnally had woken up with the suspicion, distant and faint, that the judge might want to destroy some of his notes, if there were any to be found, ones that might suggest he'd recognized even during the trial that a miscarriage of justice was occurring.

As he was driving over to the Hall of Justice, Donnally followed
that hypothesis to its conclusion. For the judge, discovering through Donnally's work something that had become meaningful with the passage of time and succeeding events would be psychologically safer than the recognition that he'd known it all along and had been afraid to act on it when it would've made a difference.

It had been the judge himself who'd admitted that since he'd been new on the bench, he felt he needed to prove himself, to prove, in his words, that he could pull the trigger. But the question now, in the judge's mind and in Donnally's, was whether or not that trigger pulling—that sentence of death and the execution that followed—would be justifiable homicide.

Donnally followed McMullin inside.

The judge set his cup on the desk and called the clerk's office to have the file, including the sealed portions, delivered.

As they sat drinking their coffees and waiting, the judge said, “If you don't mind my asking, have you made any progress figuring out what's going on with your father?”

Donnally shook his head, wondering whether the judge was seeking a diagnosis by proxy.

“That's why I want to go down there. It's not urgent. He's still months away from his film's release date, so there's no danger yet of him embarrassing himself in theaters or the press.”

“Is that what you're worried about?”

“No, but it's the kind of thing he'd worry about. It's his world.”

“But he's not worried about it now?”

Donnally wasn't sure.

If Janie was right and his father was hiding the truth from himself, then no, his father wasn't worried. Or at least not consciously worried.

If Janie was wrong, then his father would be desperate to outrun the disease in getting the picture finished and into the theaters before he lost the last bit of control over himself and his life.

Maybe his father was even playing the role of Alzheimer's larger than it was, exaggerating the symptoms in order to engender forgiveness from his investors or sympathy from the public if the film turned out to be a disaster.

“He doesn't sound worried,” Donnally said, keeping his thoughts to himself, even the ones he had about the judge and whether his sealed notes would be more dangerous to his sense of self-worth and self-confidence than just the test of his memory they might represent.

A knock drew their attention to the door. A clerk entered. She set the folders on his desk and handed him a file request form, already filled out, but for his signature. He signed it and handed it back.

The judge waited for the door to close behind her, then opened the one marked confidential. He looked inside, drew back as though surprised, and then removed a manila envelope that was taped shut, stamped “SEALED,” and marked as “Judge's Notes.”

He stared at it at length, breathing in and out, as though preparing to begin an ascent. Donnally wondered whether the delay arose from a fear of what might be contained in those notes, what they might reveal about his memory and judgment, his sense of himself, that had blocked him from checking about the notes when Donnally had asked him to.

McMullin finally reached for his letter opener and slit the envelope open along the top. He withdrew about twenty loose
pages torn from a legal pad, then looked inside and pulled out three scraps of paper. He read one to himself and smiled.

“I remember this.” The judge held it up. It was a restaurant receipt. “This is from Bucci's across the bay. It's on the day I ran away. Back then, it was a great spot to hide out.”

Donnally knew the restaurant. A low-key place in what was once the industrial district of Emeryville near the western anchorage of the Bay Bridge. Red brick. Concrete floors. Italian food and local wines. Now all the surrounding warehouses, factories, and steel mills had been converted or torn down, replaced by high-tech offices, with severe shapes and huge windows, but back then, the judge was right, it was a place of escape.

The receipt offered more evidence to Donnally that he'd been right, that McMullin had spent his whole career in hiding, starting from that day.

The judge could have said it had a great wine selection or was an excellent place to eat. But he didn't. He'd said
hide
.

“That was when I suspended the trial so that Dominguez could talk to his lawyer.” The judge pointed at a handwritten telephone number and a few words written on the back. “This must be Paul Ordloff's and this is the note I wrote to myself to call him and offer him a second day if he wanted. It was after the bailiff heard Dominguez crying.”

“Did he take it?”

“You'd have to check the docket; I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I do remember that Ordloff was in a hurry to get it over with, and not because he had some other trial to start. Court-appointed capital cases were all that Ordloff and that crew did. Had them lined up like train cars, one after another, every six
months. The judges always accommodated their schedules in setting trial dates.”

The judge paused. His vision seemed to turn inward.

“It was the psychological burden that finally got to all those serial death penalty attorneys. The muck of cases like that. Lawyers get sucked down into it. Years preparing for trial. Three months spent picking a jury. The evidence against their client was usually overwhelming. The defendants almost all had horrendous childhoods—abuse, neglect, early malnutrition—every bit of which the lawyer had to pick through, and live with and have nightmares about, trying to find mitigation for the crime.”

McMullin bit the inside of his cheek, then shook his head.

“No wonder some of these lawyers begin thinking the defendant was more of a victim than the person he murdered. It's crazy, but I can see how it happens and it clouds their judgment.”

“Like Ordloff?”

McMullin nodded. “Some of them even cry during their closing arguments at the end of the penalty phase, real tears. And the pressure during trial is enough to break anyone. Can't let their attention waver. Can't fail to make a motion or fail to make an objection or an appellate lawyer down the road will trash him and make him look incompetent. And if the case does get overturned for ineffective assistance of counsel, even because of a half second of inattention in a six-month trial, it would be reported in all the legal papers and he'd get referred to the state bar for discipline. Humiliating.”

Donnally had the feeling the judge was either seeking some kind of reflected sympathy, for the attorneys were not alone in getting sucked into the muck, or seeking a way to delay having to read through his notes and confront what was there.

Then it struck him that not just Ordloff, but McMullin himself had been on trial throughout the appeals. His evidentiary rulings, his jury instructions, his every comment, recorded by the stenographer, could, like the spontaneous admission of a criminal, be held against him.

Donnally wondered whether the judge appreciated the courage he was now displaying. Remaining silent about his doubts, not calling Donnally, letting Dominguez go to his death, would've put his own trials to an end.

Yet here the judge was, stepping into the crosshairs—almost.

Donnally pointed at the pages. “You want to go through those together?”

The judge looked down and exhaled as though fearing a diagnosis he was about to receive from an oncologist, then looked up again.

“Maybe you should have your own copy.”

The judge rose and turned to the printer-copier on the credenza behind him, fed in the pages and copied the loose scraps, and handed them to Donnally.

The judge looked at his watch, then pointed toward the hallway.

“I've got a settlement conference to take care of. I'll do it in the courtroom. You can stay here.”

Donnally stood up. “Mind if I take them with me?”

The judge shook his head. “Just keep them close. And not just for the sake of what may be in there, but also for the sake of the confidentiality judges need so that the notes they leave to themselves will be truthful and not calculated to protect their reputations down the road.”

Donnally followed McMullin partway down the private hallway
running between the judge's chambers and the courtrooms, then cut away and out through a door leading to the elevators.

He thought about McMullin's last comment on the ride down, wondering whether the judge, perhaps having doubts about his rulings even during the trial, had used those notes to create a record that couldn't be used later to embarrass him.

Donnally stepped out of the elevator on the first floor and against the flow of lawyers and their clients trailing them.

Just like when he was sitting in the 44 Double D Club in North Beach, he separated them into categories as he passed by. Those swaggering in hoodies and low-hung jeans, those pale and dry-mouthed, and those who disguised their criminality in suits and skirts. All en route to the courtrooms above seeking . . .

What?

A Sureño with a tattooed number thirteen on his bicep bumped Donnally's shoulder, then mean-mugged him with a stare and a down-turned mouth. The thirteenth letter of the alphabet—M—meant Mexican Mafia. Donnally ignored him and moved toward the exit.

Donnally wasn't sure what it was they all wanted, but he was sure that for most of them, like that gangster, it wasn't justice.