Vigilante (16 page)

I thought about it for almost a minute.

“I’ll give you this much,” I finally said. “Nash will never see it coming.”

CHAPTER

25

That night, Alexa had a law enforcement dinner at the Bonaventure Hotel downtown. Police chiefs and their executive commanders from all over the country were in town for a rubber-chicken banquet where Chief Filosiani was the keynote speaker.

I had to don the monkey suit and go as Alexa’s arm ornament. I hate these things, but being a division commander’s husband requires a few sacrifices. The banquet lasted until ten. The chief was a hit with the audience but the rest of the speeches were written by press attachés and delivered from note cards in a generally lackluster fashion.

We couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Once we retrieved the car from the hotel valet, because we were already dressed up and it was still relatively early, we went to a club called the Elephant Room, which Alexa said she’d driven past a few times and had heard was spectacular.

We hit the place at eleven. The inside had a faux East India feel. The booths along the walls were only large enough for four people but were fashioned to look like big oversized baskets, like you’d sit in to ride giant Indian elephants in Nepal or Bangladesh. There was enough phony crystal hanging from the ceiling to delight a Vegas hooker. The waiters were all wearing turbans as they served their patrons while sitar music oozed out of the sound system. For my money, it was a total miss, but we were already there, so we ordered a drink and made the best of it.

While we waited for our cocktails we quickly got around to Nix Nash,
V-TV
, and his devastating first show in L.A. When I finished filling in Alexa, she sat there scowling.

“I know we’re supposed to support the First Amendment and a free press,” she said. “But I’m sort of losing energy for it.”

“Yep,” I agreed. Then I told her what Caleb Cole had said about everything being part of the whole on that show and that there were no loose ends.

“That seems a little paranoid,” she said. “Maybe Detective Cole just feels that way because of the way he blew his murder case in Atlanta.”

“There’s probably some of that, but the whole Carla Sanchez ceiling fan runaround really got me and Hitch thinking. We talked it over. Judging from his first two seasons, the stories Nix likes to feature on the air are usually connected and part of some big overarching theme of police corruption. Those big overlapping themes are what’s driven his ratings up.”

“You’re making it sound as if Nash could be involved in Lita’s murder and maybe also in Hannah’s. But wasn’t he in the penitentiary in ’06 when Hannah got killed?”

“I wish Nix was directly involved, because I would dearly love to book that asshole. But that isn’t what’s happening. His alibi is rock solid for the time of Lita’s murder, plus they really were friends and you’re right, he was still doing time when Hannah was killed.”

I paused as our drinks were delivered by a Mexican waiter who looked like he should be a José or a Carlos but who had a name tag identifying him as Bashkir. I wasn’t buying that either. Once he left, I continued.

“Nash is all about creating high-value police humiliation. He wants to set us up, then get us to make mistakes. I don’t have a clue yet who killed Lita Mendez, but Hitch and I are gonna work it till it bleeds. I’ve got a list of potential suspects and we’re not gonna let up.”

“And if you find the perp, then Nash won’t be able to get you,” Alexa correctly surmised. “The case will be down and he’ll be without his big L.A. finale.”

“Yeah, but he’s gonna try and keep that from happening by slowing us down and wasting our time. He’s gonna feed us false leads like he did last year in Atlanta, like he already did with Carla Sanchez. He’s an ex-lawyer and he knows how to pull that off so we can’t see his hand and pin an obstruction case on him.”

“You can’t be saying he’s good enough to beat you and Hitch to the solution.”

“It’s not so much about police science as it’s about delegation of resources. Our department is spread thin. Our forensic experts are shared with a hundred and ten other detectives. Sometimes R and I, print runs, and autopsy results take weeks. There’s a wait for everything these days. Nash has ten full-time cops, ex-FBI, and forensic scientists on his TV staff. Marcia Breen vets all his legal stuff so they don’t get caught in a prosecutable offense. Web Russell will downfield block at the courthouse. Basically, Nash is going to float bum leads for us to chase and then try and beat us to the killer. He can probably do it, ’cause he’s got us outmanned ten to one.

“Making it even worse, Hitch and I only have a limited budget while he has five or six hundred thousand dollars a week to spend on that show. He can bribe suspects and offer rewards. If he finds the unsub first, then Hitch and I get launched right up into orbit and start circling the globe with Caleb Cole and Ron Baron.”

We sipped our drinks without talking for almost a minute.

Then, unexpectedly, Alexa said, “Marcia Breen is working with Nash?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t elaborate, but a survival alarm went off in the primal part of my brain that processes emotional danger.

“Didn’t you used to go out with her?” Alexa asked.

“With Marcia?”

“Yeah, who do you think I’m talking about?”

“We dated a couple of times. It was years before I met you.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Next to you, it’s like putting Marge Simpson next to Aphrodite.” I was digging hard, trying to shovel my way out of this.

“Calm down; I trust you,” Alexa said, sipping her drink slowly, never taking her eyes off me. “You used to date her, so don’t blame me for being just a little bit jealous.”

I smiled and tried to get her off this subject: “Are we through with the Marcia Breen part of this conversation? Because I’d like to move on.”

“What do you need, honey?”

“I’d like to get the Hannah Trumbull case assigned to Hitch and me. I checked this afternoon and it’s not actually being worked right now by anyone. Hitch and I want to take it over.”

“Doesn’t that double your exposure?”

“Here’s our theory on that: if somebody’s already determined to bash your head in with a hammer, what does it matter how many additional reasons you give him to try?”

Alexa took another sip of her drink and thought it over, or at least that’s what I thought she was doing. But instead, she said, “You really don’t think she’s prettier than I am?”

“What? Hell, no! Weren’t you listening to what I just said? Marcia once had a certain earthy appeal, but she went to the dark side. My Lancelot vows won’t let me anywhere near her.”

Alexa finally smiled.

When we were driving home Alexa turned to me and said, “I think you guys might be right. Taking over that case is a good strategy. Keeps us on the offensive. I’ll call Jeb and have Trumbull transferred over to you first thing in the morning.”

CHAPTER

26

“That was Judge Amador. He wants to see us in the café downstairs in fifteen minutes,” Hitch said as he hung up his desk phone. It was ten o’clock the next morning and we were in our cubicle, hard at work. “He’s over here on another matter, but has to be back at court by eleven.”

“He say why?” I asked.

“Nope, but he’s probably not selling T-shirts.”

“Superior court judges don’t call up line detectives to have coffee,” I said. “Something’s up.”

“He knows we’re working the Mendez case, because I talked to him about it yesterday. Maybe it has something to do with that. He told me it got pretty ugly at Lita’s pretrial hearing with Captain Madrid.”

“Wonderful.”

I groaned and looked down at Hannah Trumbull’s murder book that had just been sent over from the Records and Identification Division. It was spread out all over my desk. When it was delivered an hour earlier, we’d found it in a complete mess. Report pages were missing, time lines out of order, and half the crime scene and autopsy photo pages were gone. It looked like somebody had shuffled through the papers, removed material, and subsequently not returned it. Whoever did it had left the book in shambles. I’d spent the last hour trying to reassemble it into some kind of correct order and determine what was missing.

“You get a callback yet on who checked this thing out of Records?” I asked. “When I get my hands on that gremlin I’m gonna create a fresh hospital case.”

“Not yet.”

“It better not connect back to Frank Palgrave,” I groused.

“If
V-TV
has a mole inside this department it won’t be a friend of Palgrave’s. That’s way too obvious for Nash.” Hitch looked at his watch. “Guess we’d better go see what His Honor wants.”

We put on our jackets and headed out. On the way we caught a lot of sympathetic looks from the other detectives. They knew Captain Madrid and Nix Nash were circling our case like hungry carrion, and our coworkers had already started treating us like looming pension cases.

Hitch looked sharp this morning. I checked his threads as we stepped into the elevator. He was styling a black Armani pinstripe with a gray shirt and maroon tie. His expensive maroon crocodile loafers that matched his tie must have set him back at least a grand.

“For now, because the murder book is such a mess, I think we’re gonna have to rebuild this entire Trumbull case ourselves,” I told him as the elevator doors hissed closed. “I just got off the phone with the Payroll Department downstairs. Detective Hall retired in ’07 and promptly went on the EOW wall.” The end-of-watch wall in the lobby has the names of all deceased LAPD officers. “His current address is at Forest Lawn. Fatal car accident last year.

“Monroe got in his twenty, also pulled the pin in ’07, and moved to Eugene, Oregon. I called his wife. He’s on a deer-hunting trip on Mount Hood. She says he’s going to be out of cell contact for at least another week. I don’t want to wait a week and have Nash get that far ahead of us, so for now we gotta push on without him.”

Hitch nodded and picked some nonexistent lint off his cuff. “I think I hear an oboe playing,” he said sadly.

“A what?”

“The oboe is a mournful instrument that plays in movie soundtracks when something bad is about to happen.”

“That’s not an oboe; that’s the new leather squeaking on those kick-ass maroon crocs you’re wearing.”

We walked into the LA Reflections Café, which is located on the ground floor of the PAB, arriving right on time. The new restaurant was a two-hundred-seat layout with cafeteria-style service on one side and traditional dining on the other. A floor-to-ceiling expanse of glass streamed morning sunshine into the café and looked out onto an enclosed patio beyond.

The lower floors of the Police Administration Building were designed with a lot of interior windows that faced out into enclosed atriums. This paranoid architecture was intended to defeat the threat of sniper fire from the buildings across the street. We went through the food line, got coffee and rolls, and then found Judge Thomas Amador reading the
L.A. Times
sports page at a table by the window.

“Judge?” Hitch asked.

He looked up and smiled. “Hey, guys, sit down.”

Tom Amador was a big-boned guy with a husky build, a faded Marine tattoo on his forearm, and hair the color of roadside snow. Under his robes in court he usually wore jeans, a T-shirt, and frayed sneakers, which is exactly what he had on now. He looked more like the guy who comes over to detail your car than a superior court judge. Amador pushed aside the remains of his breakfast to make room for us as we slid our trays onto the table, straddled the small wood chairs, then both stuck perfect butt-first landings.

“I’m hearing for the first time this morning that you guys drew the black ace.” He turned to Hitch. “You didn’t mention that yesterday, Detective.”

“If you mean Nix Nash picked the Mendez case to fuck with, then yeah, that’s us, Your Honor,” Hitch replied.

“That’s why I wanted to see you as soon as possible.” The judge looked at his watch. “I’m running a little late. I have some motions to hear in half an hour, so let’s skip the small talk and just get to it.”

“Yes, sir,” Hitch said

Judge Amador pushed an iPhone with a set of earbuds plugged into it across the table at us.

“You guys can share the earbuds. I don’t want to play this through the phone speakers in a crowded restaurant. It’s cued up. You’ll see it’s a little sensitive.” Hitch scooted his chair closer to mine and we each inserted a bud. I positioned the iPhone between us so we could both see the screen and hit Play.

We were looking at a video being taken through the side window of a car parked in an underground garage. The shot finally settled on a department-issue blue sedan as it chirped in behind a red Chevy Caprice, blocking it just as the Caprice was reversing out of its stall. Stephanie Madrid got out of the blue sedan and slammed the door as Lita Mendez threw open the Chevy’s door and angrily stormed up to confront her. From the wall markings on the garage I recognized it as the parking structure located directly behind the municipal courthouse. Both women were dressed in conservative court attire.

“I’ve had enough of your bullshit!” Lita screamed. It was just barely audible from the distance. Then she got right in Captain Madrid’s face. “Move your fucking car!” Lita yelled.

“You little whore,” Captain Madrid responded, her face purple with rage. “All that shit you pulled in there. How many lies do you think you can get away with?”

“Get out of my way,” Lita said, stepping forward, moving directly into Stephanie Madrid’s space. “I want to leave. You’re blocking me.”

Without warning, Captain Madrid pushed Lita back to create some space between them. Lita was now against the trunk of her car.

“It’s not just me,” Madrid snarled. “There are others. You’ve been warned. Continue on this path at your own peril.”

Then Stephanie Madrid turned and started back to her car, but Lita stepped forward and swung her large purse, hitting Stephanie between the shoulder blades. Captain Madrid pivoted smartly and threw a wicked overhand right. It was the kind of punch every recruit was taught at the academy—straight from the shoulder. It landed in the middle of Lita’s forehead. The smaller Hispanic woman went down as if her legs had been yanked out from under her. Hitch and I watched in amazement as the captain now knelt down over Lita and hissed something inaudible at her.