The Trials of Nikki Hill (29 page)

“I thought we wanted the NAACP,” Walden said.

“They passed,” Fisher said. “But Af-Am Leaders carries a lot of weight, too.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Walden, who moved on to Nikki’s appointment.

“We have a bio, but we’ll need a more comprehensive one,” Meg said. “And, Nikki, if you could ask any celebrities you know for a few quotes.”

Annoyed by this petty bullshit, Nikki said, “The only celebrity I’ve been talkin’ to lately is Dyana Cooper.”

Meg gave her a flinty smile. “Then we’ll stick to just the bio,” she said.

Nikki spent as little time as she could with Meg, then devoted most of the afternoon and some of the evening to discussing the trial with Wise and Dimitra. They explained that they had decided to focus on the jealousy motive. It was basic enough for any juror to grasp immediately and it didn’t require a ton of proof.

It did require some, Nikki reminded them.

Wise told her that a number of the investigators from their office were working on the John Willins–Maddie Gray connection. “According to the gossip scum they talked to, something definitely was going on. Goodman and Morales have discovered that Maddie was seeing a black man.”

Dimitra added that the investigators were taking another pass at Maddie’s neighbors and associates and were checking hotels and hideaways. They were presently awaiting copies of Willins’s credit card purchases.

Nikki finally returned to her office at seven-thirty with a nearly filled notepad. She spent another hour sorting out the material well enough to proceed in earnest the following morning.

She was sitting at her desk, wondering if Virgil had already had dinner, when her phone rang. A long-distance operator asked the familiar question. This was followed by Mason Durant’s deep, depressing baritone.

“Hi, Nikki, thought you might be workin’ late. Jus’ heard on the news you’re gonna be prosecuting Dyana Cooper.”

So all that time spent with Meg working out a biography and press release hadn’t been a waste.

“Looks that way,” she said.

“The brothers in here think she’s being set up by the D.A.”

“Since the brothers are in there, Mace, I wouldn’t say that thinking was something they did very well. If we were going to set somebody up, my guess is it wouldn’t be America’s sweetheart. It would be one of the usual suspects.”

“What they say is you folks are so desperate, you’ll prosecute anybody you can get into court. ’Cept the guilty party, of course.”

“Goodnight, Mace,” she said.

“Wait. You know about this dude, Lee-O?”

“No. Should I?”

“Real bad mother. Very powerful. Mixed up in the Mad-die Gray murder.”

“Who told you that?” she asked. “The thinkers?”

Mace coughed from deep in his chest. “Keeps gettin’ worse,” he wheezed.

“You taking something for it?”

“What? Some magic sauce gonna polish up my lungs? Listen, Nikki, you decide you wanna know more about Lee-O, gimme a call. Maybe we can make some kind of deal. I help you out on this; you help me get out of here while I still got some breath.”

“I’ll keep your offer in mind,” she lied, hanging up the phone. Something about “Lee-O” struck a familiar chord. Considering the source, she wasn’t going to think too hard on it.

F
IFTY-SIX

T
wo days later, as Eddie Goodman headed to work on a bright, minimally smoggy morning, he pondered the way his life was shifting. On the job, things seemed to be falling into place. The Gray investigation was pretty much complete. The Arthur Lydon case was going nowhere, but since the D.A. had chosen not to attempt to introduce it into the Will-ins trial, there was only the usual pressure to get it off the books. The annoying blackmail charge was looking less and less serious. Especially since Nikki Hill, the new Dyana Cooper prosecutor whose picture had been in every newspaper and on every channel, was in his corner.

That left his personal life, which was in the crapper. Mainly because he refused to accept the fact that Gwen Harriman was in love with somebody else. The hell of it was, he wasn’t totally convinced he was in love with
her.
The only thing he knew for sure was that he cared for her and that he felt she was screwing up her life. His experience with romance and marriage had taught him that women didn’t like men to try and help them when they didn’t want to be helped. He would have to put his concern and curiosity on hold, hoping that one of these days she’d decide to tell him what was going on with her and the asshole she was so fond of she’d kicked him in the balls.

He strolled into the bullpen, expecting to find her at her desk on her second cup of coffee. She was there, all right. So was the big galoot, resting his broad butt on her desk and chatting her up.

Balls all healed, I presume.

Goodman strolled over to the desk sergeant who controlled the traffic into Major Crimes and asked, “Who’s the flattop with Gwen?”

The sergeant, a grizzled specimen on the cusp of retirement, squinted across the bullpen. “Lattimer,” the sergeant said. “Vice jagoff. Been in a couple times lately.”

“To see Gwen?” Goodman asked.

“Naw,” the sergeant said. “To put my sorry ass to work looking stuff up for him.”

“What sort of stuff?”

The sergeant spun around, punched a few buttons on his computer. He looked at the screen, then brightened. “Yeah. Right,” he said. “He asked me to see if this officer worked any of our cases. There was only one. Martinez. Rudy Martinez.”

“That the officer’s name?” Goodman asked.

“Naw,” the sergeant snorted. He seemed surprised at the detective’s ignorance. “You don’t remember the Martinez case? Rudy Martinez, son of the actor Nestor Martinez? Got involved in some kind of weapons sale and wound up with more bullets in him than Mussolini?”

Goodman nodded, vaguely recalling the murder.

“It was the only one of our cases the computer spit out that had William Hill connected to it.”

“William Hill? That’s the name of the officer Lattimer asked about?”

“Yep. On the beat his whole career. Retired now, I guess.”

Goodman watched the vice cop Lattimer give Gwen a smirky farewell wink. He couldn’t read her expression as she watched the asshole depart. She brightened when she spotted Goodman. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the departing Lattimer, raising his eyebrows questioningly. She shook her head as if to say, “It’s nothing.”

It didn’t seem like nothing to Goodman.

F
IFTY-SEVEN

I
t was only nine-fifteen in the morning, but Nikki’s desk was covered with transcribed interviews, reports, case studies, and a stack of messages. She picked the one from her bank. Something about an overdrawn account due to a $12,500 withdrawal.

“I didn’t withdraw any twelve thousand dollars,” she informed a clerk in a deceptively calm voice.

“Twelve thousand, five hundred,” the clerk corrected her. “On Tuesday of last week. I’m looking at your account, Ms. Hill. It shows very clearly that you made an on-line withdrawal—”

“Hold it! What kind of withdrawal?”

“On-line, using your computer.”

“I wouldn’t know how to make a computer withdrawal if you put a gun to my head.”

“Just a minute, Ms. Hill.”

A woman identifying herself as the branch manager, Mrs. Hellman, took over the call. Her voice was soft and genteel and annoyingly passive as she repeated what her assistant had already informed Nikki.

“As I just told your assistant,” Nikki said, “I made no such withdrawal.”

“Yes, it is a bit odd. I see that the withdrawal order entered the system only today, yet, for some reason, was predated. Most confusing. But we were following your requ—”

“What happened to the money?” Nikki interrupted.

“Hmmm. It appears you used the funds to open a second account in your name.”

Nikki tried to remain calm, but it was an uphill fight. “I didn’t use the funds, Mrs. Hellman. This is the first I’ve heard of the funds. You’ve obviously made a mistake.”

“Our system doesn’t make mistakes, Ms. Hill.”

“Okay. Close the new account. Take the twelve thousand, five hundred dollars and apply it to my old account. That should solve all our problems.”

“We can do that, Ms. Hill,” Mrs. Hellman said. “There will be bank charges, of course. And interest on the funds your automatic overdraw protection borrowed from your credit card account.”

Nikki counted to ten. “Don’t I need some sort of software to bank by computer?”

“Of course.”

“Why don’t you check my file to see if I ever requested that software, Mrs. Hellman? Then, should you even dream of charging me so much as a plugged nickel because of some screwup in your system, it will be my happy duty to discuss this whole matter with you in front of a judge. I can assure you, I won’t be the one paying for the use of the court.”

She slammed down the phone.

Almost immediately, it rang.

She grabbed the receiver. “What now?” she asked roughly.

Momentary silence greeted her on the other end. Then Dimitra Shaw’s voice asked, “Nikki? You okay?”

“Oh. Dimitra. Just letting off some steam. A screwup at my bank.”

“That’s how it starts,” Dimitra said. “Bank screwup. Dead battery in the car. Phone doesn’t work. Little things.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dyana Cooper’s people. They just don’t let up,” Dimitra said. “But that’s not life-threatening... Look, we gotta meet.”

“You in your office?”

“No way. I’m outta there. Can you make it to Jonah’s in about fifteen minutes?” Jonah’s was a coffee shop four blocks away from the CCB.

“You know how busy it is around here?” Nikki asked.

“This is important, sister. Serious shit. I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.”

“Jonah’s, huh,” Nikki said.

The phone rang again before she could get away.

This time it was Detective Goodman with a question about her father.

“My father?” she said, feeling her face flush with heat. “I don’t know anything about my father. Or his business, past or present.”

The detective was yakking on about some murder vic named Martinez.

“I’m late for a meeting,” she said impatiently. “Isn’t this something that can wait?”

“I suppose it’ll have to,” Goodman told her.

As usual, the elevator took an eternity to arrive. By the time she cleared the building, the fifteen minutes were already up.

Nikki was nearly a block away when she saw the crowd gathering in front of Jonah’s. They were looking down at something in the gutter with grim fascination. A siren sounded in the distance, coming closer.

Nikki started running. Then she was pushing past the street gawkers.

The crushed body of Dimitra Shaw was draped over the curb, battered head resting in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, legs in the gutter.

“Oh, my God.” Nikki heard the words without realizing she’d said them. She stared down at the lifeless body and her heart seemed to skip a beat in her chest. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Ambulance comin’,” an elderly man called out.

“Too late for an ambulance,” a young girl said. “She dead.”

“What...happened?” Nikki asked.

“She was jayin’ ’cross the street,” the girl said, “an’ this car swerved, whomped her an’ kep’ on goin’.”

“What kind of car?” A red wave of anger coursed through Nikki’s body, but she couldn’t pinpoint its source. Frustration. Guilt.

The girl recognized her. “You the one on the TV? The D.A.?”

“Tell me about the car,” Nikki demanded, grabbing the girl’s arm.

The girl looked frightened. She jerked free and backed away. “Don’t know ’bout any car,” she said.

The sound of the ambulance was louder now, almost filling Nikki’s head. “Don’t you lie to me . . .” But the girl was running away.

Nikki turned to the others and shouted, “Who saw the car that did this?”

They looked at her, dumbly.

“Damn it. Somebody must’ve seen the car.”

She was out of control, weeping and screaming at them. She might as well have ordered them to disperse. By the time the ambulance roared up, she was alone, kneeling in the street beside Dimitra’s body.

A paramedic helped her to her feet. “You okay, miss?” he asked.

She ignored the question. She was too busy watching his partner confirm the fact that Dimitra was dead. “Pricks who did this musta been really travelin’,” he said. “Knocked her right out of her shoes.”

Nikki looked at the leather pumps lying in the street. Her heart broke when she realized they were the same brand and style as the ones she was wearing.

F
IFTY-EIGHT

G
oodman was at his desk, wondering why Nikki Hill had gotten so pissed off at the mention of her father, when his partner flopped down in the chair across from him.

“Alarm didn’t go off?” Goodman said.

“Bastards tried to snatch Estella’s car,” Morales mumbled. Estella was his wife.

“What?”

“Repo guys. Said I was behind in the payments. Bullshit. Had to dig out my stinkin’ canceled checks. Estella screaming in my ear the whole time.”

“Get it straightened out?”

Morales nodded. “Yeah. After forty minutes. Computer mix-up. But no apol—”

He was stopped by Corben shouting their names.

The lieutenant was not in a good mood. “You gents seem to have missed a beat in the Gray case. But not to worry, the D.A.’s investigators picked up the slack.”

Corben paused, letting them stand there, waiting. Then he asked, “Ever hear of a place in the desert called the Sanctum?”

Morales didn’t bother to reply. Goodman said, “Some kinda spa.”

“Very good, detective,” Corben said. “Celebrities go there when they want to get away from it all. ‘It all’ meaning their spouses, primarily. Place’s got private cabanas. The staff is paid enough they keep their lips zipped. Anybody caught within five miles with a camera gets the shit beat out of ’em.”

Goodman sighed. This was going to be grim.

“So, these D.A.’s men, they find out John Willins goes to the Sanctum. Not a lot, but every so often. Any idea who the lucky gal was who accompanied Mr. Willins?”