Night Is the Hunter (23 page)

D
onnally stood on the pebbled bank of the Smith River watching Judge McMullin standing waist deep ten yards from shore. The current separated around his waders leaving a slick of quiet water below him. The setting sun, streaking the flat water between the rapids with shimmering yellow, orange, and gold, enveloped the judge in its glow.

The fluidity of the judge's casts first surprised Donnally, then he realized it shouldn't have. After all, it was too soon for the disease to show itself in the physical symptoms of fumbling hands and unsteady steps. But then he realized the relief the judge must feel, the liberation, not that Alzheimer's was an excuse for his confusions and failures of memory, but an explanation for them.

As the last bit of light descended in the west and twilight rose in the east, Donnally thought back on his father and the judge sitting together in the waiting room of the Stanford-VA Alzheimer's Research Center a week earlier. It was there that doctors discovered the plaque-causing proteins that cause the disease in McMullin's blood. His father had been looking for an opportunity to make up for his mistakes, to share what he'd learned about the disease during the making of his film, and Donnally had given it to him.

The two looked like old men sharing a park bench. Donnally had felt himself well up when he noticed his father had taken the judge's hand in his. His parents had always been so private in their affection, and his father had always been so self-absorbed, that Donnally hadn't expected this kind of tenderness. He wondered, even found himself hoping, that the gesture meant something more, that a time of insight into himself and sympathy for others had finally come for his father, too.

Donnally used the distraction of the nurse standing in the open door leading to the examining rooms and calling out a patient's name to turn away and wipe his eyes.

Now they teared up again, this time bitten by the chill wind sweeping up the river from the Pacific as he watched the judge cast.

The first time they had stood together in this place, the judge seemed less a fisherman than a fugitive, running away from the past, driven by fear, but at the same time drawn back to it by conscience. And Donnally still didn't think McMullin had become a fisherman. He doubted it would've have made any difference to the judge if his lure bore no hook at all.

Donnally knew the river too well to think there were any steelhead still moving upstream. The run was over. The few fish left were heading back to the sea, driven both by instinct and by a rain-fed flow that sped them home as fast as birds in flight. The judge had said he wanted to come anyway, needed to come, and not because he'd reached a time of ending, of resignation, of submission to the forces of nature and of fate, but because the river was life and light, and time and hope, even as he faced the coming of his night.

E
ach Harlan Donnally novel focuses on a problem in the criminal justice process.
Act of Deceit
dealt with a systemic failure relating to defendants found incompetent to stand trial.
A Criminal Defense
dealt with criminality on the part of the defense.
Night Is the Hunter
deals with criminality on the part of the prosecution.

As far as I know, this is the first crime novel based on the notion of implied malice. And for good reason. It's a complicated concept.

For those who might be interested in the underlying legal issues, the following is a standard jury instruction regarding implied malice:

        
1.
 
The defendant intentionally committed an act;

        
2.
 
The natural and probable consequences of the act were dangerous to human life;

        
3.
 
At the time the defendant acted, the defendant knew the act was dangerous to human life; and

        
4.
 
The defendant deliberately acted with conscious disregard for human life.

These elements, which are consistent from state to state, are also involved when a person engages in a provocative act that causes another to take an action dangerous to human life.

To state more formally what is shown in the story:

First, Harvey Madding, along with coconspirators, intentionally committed acts that were inherently dangerous to human life and that would have resulted in the execution of Israel Dominguez, but for Judge McMullin and Harlan Donnally's intervention.

Second, Madding engaged in a provocative act by causing the jury to convict on the crime of murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait, recommending the death sentence, and causing the judge to impose it.

Lawyers and judges, depending both on the state they live in and their views of the law, will disagree about whether a conviction for attempted second-degree murder or a conspiracy to commit second-degree murder would stand up on appeal. (Higher courts around the country have differed in their answers and legislatures have tried to resolve the issues.) But since I am a writer of crime novels and not of law review articles, I'll leave them to argue among themselves.

I ran across the Rumpelstiltskin analogy in psychiatric research into the disturbed inner logic of homicide conducted by Andrew K. Ruotolo, M.D., and reworked it for this story. The
Alzheimer's theme was prompted by my reading the wonderful novel,
Before I Forget,
by Leonard Pitts Jr. (Bolden Books, 2009).

Thanks to two fine criminal defense attorneys, Chris Cannon, who read the book in advance and offered suggestions that clarified and improved the story, and Louisa Havstad, who was kind enough to talk though some legal points early on. Thanks, as always, to Scott Sugarman; Bruce Kaplan; Julie Quater; John, Jack, and Michael Beuttler; Bobbie Chinsky; John Somerville; Diane Gore-Uecker; John Uecker; Dennis and Judy Barley; Rick and Gail Monge; Randy and Margie Schmidt; Trevor and Cassie Patterson; Glenn and Judy Pollock; and Carl and Kathy Polhemus. Thanks also to Katy Pose, PA-C, Ranjana Advani, M.D., and Alan Yuen, M.D., for fifteen extremely interesting years and to my wife, Liz, my first, last, and best reader.

Thanks also to my editor, Emily Krump, my copyeditor, Laurie McGee, and my publicist, Heidi Richter, who did such fine work in preparing and presenting this book.

STEVEN GORE
is a renowned private investigator turned “masterful” writer
(Publishers Weekly)
, who combines “a command of storytelling” with “insider knowledge”
(Library Journal)
. With a unique voice honed both on the street and in the Harlan Donnally and Graham Gage novels, Gore's stories are grounded in his decades spent investigating murder; fraud; organized crime; corruption; and drug, sex, and arms trafficking throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

Cover photograph © by Cavan Images/Getty Images

G
RAHAM
G
AGE
T
HRILLERS

Final Target

Absolute Risk

Power Blind

H
ARLAN
D
ONNALLY
N
OVELS

Act of Deceit

A Criminal Defense

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NIGHT IS THE HUNTER
. Copyright © 2015 by Steven Gore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-202509-8

EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN 9780062198136

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