were throwing in with Lita, accusing the police of just about everything but double-parking.
However, even Lita’s detractors admitted that she had a sophisticated understanding of how to use the court system and the complicated Federal Consent Decrees that, until recently, had governed the LAPD. She had often stated in the
She might have made an excellent attorney, because with no formal legal training and a closet of conservative business suits for court, Lita Mendez had managed to keep Internal Affairs and our city prosecutors embroiled in an endless legal debate. Just last week Captain Stephanie Madrid had filed a criminal lawsuit against Lita, charging her with intentionally making a false police report.
In the gang-corrupted streets, she was heralded by Evergreens as a hero. They claimed she had the courage to stand up to City Hall. Her attorney, who mostly worked her cases pro bono, claimed Lita had never been convicted of a felony, even though she did have a sealed stolen-car beef dating back to when she was a juvenile.
When I was finished, I had compiled a long list of people who hated her guts. A lot of them were cops.
Capt. Stephanie Madrid was well known to everyone in the department. She was a hard-ass who ran the Advocates Section at IA. Advocates were police officers who had the job of prosecuting accused officers. In essence, they were advocates for the department. Defense reps were the officers picked by the accused to defend them. A defense rep could be any officer on the LAPD as long as they were below the rank of captain. The chief advocate had supervisory responsibilities over both the advocates and defense reps. It was a big, important job and Captain Madrid ran a large machine that brought police officers charged with malfeasance before administrative Board of Rights hearings. Hundreds of cops had found themselves facing boards because of Lita’s mostly frivolous complaints.
When I finished, I rubbed my eyes, which were fatigued from hours on the Internet. It was a depressing compilation of facts and angry people. I had a long list of G-sters and cops to look into, including a prickly IA captain. Stephanie Madrid was often referred to as the “Queen of the Dark,” so I certainly wasn’t looking forward to conducting a suspect interview with her.
One thought was buzzing around me like the angry green blowflies in Lita’s kitchen: this certainly was the perfect case for
At five o’clock Hitch called to say he was just leaving the ME’s office. I suggested we meet for a beer in a bar called the Copper Buckle across the street from the Police Administration Building. A lot of cops came in there for drinks after work, and it was usually packed.
We found a booth in the back and sat across from each other over foaming mugs. I gave Hitch a copy of my background information on Lita and he slid my copy of the ME’s report over. Instead of reading the paperwork, we filled each other in verbally and would go through the paperwork later. After I gave him Lita’s background info, he started recapping the coroner’s report.
“The two bullet wounds to the head were made by nine-millimeter copper-jacketed Federals. They were one-hundred-twenty-nine-grain Hydra-Shok hollow points and were fired postmortem,” he began.
“If she was already dead, it sounds like the doer had some personal issues with the vic,” I said, thinking of my long list of angry cops.
“Lita was beaten to death first,” Hitch went on. “Head trauma, body trauma, and massive brain hemorrhage on the right side of the cerebellum, which Ray says was the immediate cause of death.”
“How about DNA?” I asked.
“Nothing on her body. Her nails had soap under them. Maybe she brushed her nails. Maybe the killer did. No soap where we found her, so it didn’t happen while she was lying on her kitchen floor. The body was clean. No foreign hair or skin traces, no vaginal DNA. It was so clean, in fact, the coroner thinks the corpse could have been hand vacuumed, which means the unsub knew what he was doing.”
We drank our beers while I turned pages on the ME report. When I finished scanning the analysis, I looked up at him.
“We got nothing here to hold Carla or Julio Sanchez.”
“I still think there’s an outside chance they could be good for it,” Hitch replied.
“Except we don’t have enough to charge them. Even if CSI matches their prints to prints inside the house it may not matter, because Carla used to live there. How about time of death?” I asked.
“Still working on it. Her stomach content analysis came back just before I left, so it’s not on that top sheet. I clipped it to the back page. Lita had a mostly digested meal of beef enchiladas and Mexican beans. Ray thinks when she died it was maybe four hours old. If she ate at eight, which is just a guess, then she might have been killed around midnight. That fits with the lights still being on and the absence of rigor mortis.”
“Enchiladas? So much for the Bolognese sauce.”
“Once every ten years or so, I’m wrong,” he said, smiling ruefully. “That TOD estimate is also supported by lividity and maggot gestation. Ray will try and dial it in a little closer tomorrow by figuring in the ambient room temperature and adjusting for the temperature’s effect on larva development.”
“Carla said she was there at eleven and Julio confirms it. If you believe them, it puts Carla outside the window on this preliminary time of death,” I said.
We ordered two more beers. After they arrived I said, “Just for the hell of it, I checked on Nix Nash’s whereabouts, not that I think he did it, but I would have loved to get a way to stir him up a little.”
“Tell me.”
“He was in South Florida for some fund-raiser when she died.”
“I still don’t think we should cut the Sanchezes loose,” Hitch said.
“They’re on a seventy-two-hour hold. We could hang on to them for another day.”
“I think that’s what we should do. Their bags are already packed and if we guess wrong and they really are the doers, it’s
I nodded my agreement. It had been a long, depressing day. Neither of us wanted this damn case.
So we packed up the paperwork, finished our beers, and went home.
CHAPTER 11
“So tell me about Nash,” Alexa said. We were sitting in the backyard of our Venice canal house. The sun was just setting and the cloud-filled sky had turned to a mosaic of fiery colors. I can usually maximize the benefits of a beautiful sunset better than anybody can, but this evening I was barely aware of the bright oranges and purples that were part of the trailing edge of the February storm that had threatened a much-needed rain but had passed on without dropping any.
After I filled her in on
“Start with your suspects,” Alexa said, obviously concerned about the possibility of a police doer.
“It’s a very polarized list. Half my names are gang assholes from competing sets who Lita had dustups with or enemies of her brother, Homer. The other half are cops she filed complaints against. Even Captain Madrid made the list.”
“Stephanie may be a bit of a hard-ass, but that lawsuit and the false-reporting case she got the DA to file were only to back Lita off from all those nuisance complaints,” Alexa defended. “Captain Madrid was just doing her job.”
“Easy for you to say, because she’s your pit bull. I wonder what Nash’s take is going to be.”
We were drinking Coronas as the evening cooled. A family of ducks beat ass across the wind-rippled canal toward a thicket of reeds near the shoreline. Our cat, Franco, was hunkered in the bushes licking his chops, but the ducks were out of range.
“Nix Nash says he wants me to give him a chance to prove he’s a good guy,” I continued. “In one breath he calls me Shane and tells me he just loves police. Then, in the next, he tells me he can feel the future and he sees
