The Trials of Nikki Hill (9 page)

While the coroner listed the various Dumpster contents found clinging to the corpse, Nikki’s attention shifted to the doctor’s assistants, who were busily photographing body samples and collecting fluids. Madeleine Gray’s liver was thrown on a scale, then deposited into a plastic bag. Other organs were weighed and put in a larger bag that was closed and placed between the corpse’s legs. The corpse was then cocooned in a material not unlike Saran Wrap. Finally, a rope was tied around the late Madeleine Gray’s arms and shoulders. Why, Nikki couldn’t imagine.

At the end of the ordeal the detectives put away their notebooks, and Wise, who’d filled several pages of a legal pad with his small, precise printing, clipped his pen to the pad. Nikki was startled to realize that her own pad was blank. She’d forgotten to take notes. She quickly zipped up her briefcase and hoped Wise hadn’t noticed.

His interest was elsewhere. “When will we have the final results of your tests, doctor?” he asked.

“Two weeks,” the coroner replied. “The DNA? You’re

talking more than a month.”

“What about blood type?”

“I could have something on that for you today,” she said. Wise told her that would be lovely. Then he turned to Nikki. “Meeting in Joe’s office in half an hour,” he said. “Don’t be late.”

T
WELVE

N
ikki was impressed by Joe Walden’s apparent calm. He had less than an hour to decide if he should formally accuse Jamal Deschamps of murder or set him free. Still, he was leaning back in his chair, chilling out while Wise relayed the results of the autopsy. When the head deputy finished, Walden sighed and focused on his spotless desktop. Except for the fingers of his right hand doing a little dance on the arm of his chair, he might have been a man with nothing of consequence on his mind.

Nikki, on the other hand, felt restless and uneasy, as if she were several cups of coffee over her limit. The morgue experience had left its mark on her, its peculiar, funky smell still clogging her nostrils. Then, the article about her in the morning
L.A. Times,
which was waiting on her desk when she arrived, added its own jolt of anxiety. Not only had it carried the erroneous information that she was the deputy “overseeing” the Gray investigation, it referenced the infamous Weenie Defense Murder Trial, noting that “Hill refuses to discuss either the trial or why she chose to spend the next few years out of the fast lane, serving in the Compton courts.”

Just as vexing, the article mentioned her father, William Hill, citing his long and distinguished career as a member of the LAPD. Nikki had carefully stonewalled questions about her personal life and, much to the dismay of Press Relations Deputy Meg Fisher, had cut the interview short when the reporter had grown too insistent in probing into her upbringing. She had also turned down requests for interviews long or short from, according to Meg, twenty-six legitimate news outlets. Of course, to Meg, the
Globe
was a legitimate news outlet.

Ray Wise, perched beside her on an uncomfortable gray leather chair that was a twin of hers, cleared his throat suddenly. The noise seemed to shake Walden from his reverie. “I’m surprised more of the killer’s flesh wasn’t recovered,” the D.A. said. “Judging by all the scratches on Deschamps’s back, I was expecting there to be enough skin under the victim’s fingernails to make a small boy.”

“Deschamps says it was the other broad who tore him up,” Wise said. “So maybe he wasn’t lying about that. Anyway, there was enough for Fugitsu to work with. She said she’ll have a blood type for us today.”

Walden consulted his watch. “Any particular time today?”

Wise shook his head.

“Take us through the crime, Ray.”

Wise plucked a yellow legal pad from a briefcase beside his chair. He flipped a few note-filled pages and began. “Sometime between seven and ten P.M. Deschamps and the deceased were at her place, probably playing some sort of sex game. There were booze and drugs, according to Fugitsu. But no semen was found in the body. So maybe Maddie tells the guy no and this pisses him off. The party gets rough. He belts her around, just like he’s belted other women in the past. She doesn’t like it, gives him some of it back and that pisses him off even more. He picks up something handy and uses it to crack her skull.”

Wise’s scenario was raising a number of questions in Nikki’s mind, but she knew better than to interrupt him. Instead, she made notes and kept quiet.

“So there’s Deschamps with a dead woman on his hands. In the woman’s house. Still, he doesn’t panic. It’s dark outside. The house is secluded. He wraps Gray’s naked tokus in a rug and drags it out to his car. He wants to dump the body ASAP, but he’s afraid to take the chance of somebody seeing him. It’s unfamiliar territory to him. So he drives down to an area he knows, South Central, where, even if he’s seen, there’s less chance anybody’s going to report it.

“After he unloads the body, he feels wired, excited. He goes to a bar, picks up a bimbo,” Wise consulted his notes, “one Dorothea Downs. They screw until around two A.M. when her roommate shows up and Deschamps takes a walk. “That’s when he remembers the ring on the dead woman’s finger. A bauble like that’s worth a few bucks. So he goes back to the alley. And gets nabbed.”

Walden nodded, then turned to Nikki. “Comments?”

Her mind started to compose a diplomatic response, but Wise hated her guts anyway. So, the hell with diplomacy. “What makes you think the murder took place at her house, Ray?” she asked. “The police still aren’t sure where it happened.”

“Depends on who you talk to, sweetie,” he replied. “The house is where they found the likely weapon. You know, the hunk of metal sculpture with blood on it. There’s a missing rug Deschamps must’ve used to wrap up the body for delivery. And, there’s the broken lock on the vic’s office cabinet.

That might be considered a little clue, too, that the murder took place on the premises.”

“What do you suppose happened to the clothes she was wearing?” she asked.

“Relevance?” Wise inquired.

“If she and Deschamps were engaged in sex play that turned deadly and if she wound up naked in an alley, wouldn’t her clothes be in a pile near the murder scene?”

Walden gave her a smile of confidence and turned to Wise. The prosecutor shrugged his bony shoulders. “Maybe Des-champs folded them up and put ’em on a shelf.”

“The clothes she was last seen wearing are missing. Shoes, too.”

“So Deschamps dumped ’em in another alley.”

“Why?” Nikki asked. “If he killed the woman in her own home, why not just leave the clothes there?”

Walden’s head deputy looked at him pleadingly. “Can’t we stop with this bullshit? In seventeen years on this job, I’ve yet to try one case where everything made perfect sense. As anybody with any experience knows, murderers don’t behave rationally. So he took her clothes. Why? I don’t give a shit. Maybe some of his blood got on them. Maybe he likes going in drag. They’re missing. If they turn up, fine. If they don’t, too bad.”

Walden asked, “Anything else, Nikki?”

“Ray, you say he dragged the body to his car. What car? According to Deschamps, and the DMV, he has no car.”

“That’s not quite true,” Wise said. “He doesn’t own a car, but he’s been using one. A Buick Regal, two decades old, registered to George Penn, Deschamps’s uncle. It was found this morning near the bar where Deschamps picked up the Downs woman. Lab’s going over it now.”

Nikki mentally chided herself for not keeping on top of every aspect of the investigation. She should have known

about the car. Well, she still had one more card to play. “About the busted file cabinet in Maddie Gray’s office,” she said. “According to Detective Goodman it’s filled with blackmail material.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Wise said. “Let’s not go off on some wild tangent. Jamal busted open a locked drawer because he thought there was money inside. He found only Maddie’s files, which he left in place.”

“The killer ignored a box full of jewelry in her bedroom,” Nikki said. “Ignored an expensive wristwatch resting on the side of her bath. Ignored a small cash box containing several hundred dollars for office expenses that was on her desk. And he pried open a metal cabinet in the hope there was money inside? Doesn’t it seem more logical that the killer was looking for something specific—a folder full of information that Maddie Gray was using to blackmail him?”

“Ray?” Walden asked. He had an amused smile on his face that Nikki found irritating. He was enjoying the Hill-Wise battle a little too much for her taste.

“This is all unnecessary speculation,” Wise said. “We don’t know who ripped open the cabinet drawer or why. It may not have even been the killer. As for Madeleine Gray being a blackmailer, she made her money from gossip. That’s what she did every night on TV, spill the beans on a bunch of celebrities. Naturally, she had a cabinet full of nasty secrets. Where’s the blackmail?”

“I was with Detectives Goodman and Morales when they opened her bank boxes filled with cash,” Nikki said. “Two hundred thousand dollars. What does that tell you?”

“It sure as hell doesn’t tell me we’ve got the wrong man,” Wise said. “Not when our boy was apprehended in the alley just ten feet from his victim with her frigging ring in his pants pocket.”

“Why would he risk going back to the body to take her ring, after leaving all the other jewelry and money at her house?” Nikki asked.

“Because he’s an asshole,” Wise almost shouted. “Read my lips: Murderers usually don’t make sense. It’s also possible he didn’t see the other stuff.”

Nikki was formulating a reply when the phone rang.

Walden scooped it up, listened for a beat, and then crooned a reply that was not quite audible from across the desk. Obviously puzzled, he replaced the receiver. “Dr. Fugitsu’s office,” he said. “The blood type from under Gray’s thumbnail is O-positive, same as Deschamps’s.”

“All right!” Wise exclaimed.

“The other samples, however, from the fingernails, are AB.”

“So she scratched somebody else that morning, or the day before. Maybe somebody she bumped into. We still have Deschamps’s type under her thumbnail.”

“You’re just gonna ignore the other tissue?” Nikki asked.

“Why not? It has no bearing on our case. We’ve got a type O-pos that does.”

“It’s the most common type,” Nikki said. “The presence of the AB is a problem and we’ll need something more conclusive on the O. In four weeks, we’ll have the irrefutable DNA results.”

“Sure,” Wise said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We can let Deschamps go home now. He’ll just hang around his apartment for several weeks, waiting for us to make sure he killed the Gray woman. Then all we’ll have to do is send somebody out to pick him up. Maybe Nikki can go.”

She ignored him and concentrated on Walden. “If Madeleine Gray was a blackmailer, Durant is probably not our killer,” she said.

“Durant?” Walden asked.

“I’m sorry. Deschamps,” she corrected herself. Wise was staring at her, frowning. She turned back to Walden, determined to move past the gaff. “Couldn’t we at least contact some of the people in those files and find out if she’s been bleeding them?”

Walden considered it for a few beats, then said, “We’d wind up terrorizing and/or infuriating several extremely important and influential people.”

“And,” Wise added, “Deschamps’s attorney would be very happy to point out to a jury that we were so uncertain of his guilt we initiated a whole new area of investigation.”

“I am forced to agree,” Walden said. “Deschamps is all yours, Ray. Murder one. Special circumstances. Start the arraignment process.” His eyes shifted to Nikki. “Thanks for your input.”

She knew it was silly to take the D.A.’s decision as a personal defeat, but she couldn’t help herself. Walden must have picked up on her mood, because he added, “If I didn’t make it clear before, Ray, as my special assistant, Nikki will be part of your team.”

Wise looked as if his boss had just slapped him across the face. “That’s not going to work. She doesn’t even believe in the case.”

“Good. Convince her and you should have no trouble with an impartial jury.”

“Jesus, Joe—” Wise began.

“The subject’s closed,” Walden cut him off. “Keep her fully up to date.”

Wise replied with a curt nod. He glared at Nikki as he left the room.

“It’s important that we know precisely what they’re up to at Major Crimes,” Walden said to Nikki. “I suggest you develop some contacts over there. But I caution you: Don’t be too candid with them about our progress.”

“No?”

“I don’t trust their security,” Walden said. “Although Lieutenant Corben runs a very effective operation, all it takes is one rotten apple.”

“Any particular bad apple in mind?” Nikki asked.

“If I did, I’d let Corben know,” he said. “Just use discretion.”

“I will,” she said.

When she remained seated, he asked, “Something else?”

“This sudden publicity,” she said. “I’m not comfortable with it.”

“I thought you’d be pleased.”

“The article in the paper this morning made it sound like I was in charge of the Gray case.”

“We provide journalists with the correct information,” he said. “What they do with it...But I’ll tell Meg to clarify your duties in the future.”

“I just want people to get it right that Ray will be the one bringing Jamal Deschamps to trial, not me,” she said.

“Point noted,” he said.

Wise was waiting for her at his office door. “Would you please come in.” It was more an order than a request.

She entered, her wariness increasing when he closed the door. “Let’s get this straight at the jump,” he said, almost whispering. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and Walden. Maybe it’s because you’re black, maybe you’re sucking his dick. Christ, maybe he even thinks you can do the job. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I care about is putting Jamal Deschamps where he belongs. You try to get between me and that, I’ll knock you down and kick you out of the way. Am I making myself clear?”

“You were clear the first day I laid eyes on you,” she said, seething. “Cellophane.”