Vigilante

“Ms. Baxter?” I asked.

She looked up and smiled. She was a pretty brunette in her early thirties with a full-bodied, vivacious quality. She’d probably had to chase off half a dozen requests to buy her drinks before I arrived.

“Detective Scully?” she asked.

“Yes.” We shook hands as I slid into the booth.

“Glad you got here. It’s been a hard day and I could really use a drink, but I don’t drink alone.”

We waved over a waiter. Linda ordered a Manhattan. I had a Corona with lime.

“You’re still investigating Hannah’s murder? I thought they had that solved. They even have a picture of the guy.”

“I’m starting from scratch, going over the whole case again.”

“God … poor Hannah. That was so awful,” Linda said with a shudder as the drinks were delivered. “When it happened, I was numb for a week.”

“I just got assigned the case,” I said. “I think you spoke to Detectives Monroe and Hall a few years back.”

“I only talked to Hall. Monroe seemed to always be in court.”

“They’re no longer on the case. Detective Hall was killed in a car accident and Detective Monroe retired.”

I worked my way into it slowly, talking about her friendship with Hannah and their trips to Las Vegas.

“It was fun traveling with her. We both loved to play blackjack, so we’d hit Vegas about three times a year. She was one of those people who didn’t judge you. She saw things for what they were, if you know what I mean. No bullshit.”

“I understand she worked in the ER.”

“She liked it there. She had nerves of steel, that one. Didn’t rattle. Hannah was very passionate about her work. A special girl in all ways.”

We talked for a few more minutes about Hannah and her work at the hospital and then I segued into the threat against her life that occurred two days before the murder.

“She mentioned that, but she never really told me who had screamed at her,” Baxter answered. “A woman. That’s all she’d say. It bothered her, but there’s so much going on in the ER, she didn’t have a whole lot of time to remain focused on it.”

“Was she also dating a police officer?” I asked.

The minute I said that, Linda recoiled as if I’d just touched her with a live wire.

“Who told you that?” she demanded sharply.

“Her parents. Were they wrong?”

She was looking around the bar as if someone might overhear us.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I guess.”

“Listen, Linda. You were her friend. Somebody killed her. I don’t think it was the black guy who robbed that house across the street. I think that theory just let Hall and Monroe file the case. I want to find out who really killed her. To do that, I need your help.”

“We’re not all as brave as Hannah,” she said softly.

“What are you afraid of?”

She fidgeted but didn’t speak.

“Okay, look … you tell me and I promise I won’t reveal where I got the information. Fair enough?”

“If you catch the killer, once it’s in court, won’t they make me testify?”

“We’re a long way from court. Please, help me help Hannah. She can’t speak for herself any longer. It’s up to us to do that for her.”

Linda sat for a long time, trying to come to grips with it.

“You promise?” she finally said.

“Promise.”

A moment later, she began, haltingly at first, but then she picked up speed. “Okay, you’re right. Hannah was dating a cop.… He was more than just a regular cop. One of those officers who keep getting in gun battles and killing people. He was huge-almost six-five-and scary looking. I told her what I thought of him. I told her she should give that guy a wide berth. But, as I just said, Hannah was strong willed. She told me he wasn’t anything like I thought. She said she cared for him and underneath he was very sweet.”

“Do you remember his name?” I asked, but I already knew who it was.

“His name was Lester Madrid.”

CHAPTER 31

“What on earth are you wearing?” Jeb asked sharply as Hitch slipped into the captain’s office, where four of us were already waiting. He was dressed in a white chef’s smock with a Spago logo on the breast pocket.

“Sorry, skipper. I was at a cooking class and Dina Lohan accidentally spilled some red wine on my shirt. This was all I could borrow.” He smiled an apology and dropped into a chair next to the door.

Alexa and DC Bud Hawkins were already seated. Jeb was standing near his desk and I was on the sofa across the room.

“Okay, now that we’ve all finally arrived, let’s hear what you’ve got,” Deputy Chief Hawkins demanded, pinning me with a cold look. He’d delayed dinner plans to be here and was making no attempt to hide his displeasure. Hawkins was Chief of Operations and Alexa’s immediate supervisor.

I ran them through my interview with Linda Baxter. When I got to the part where Baxter told me that Hannah Trumbull had been dating Sgt. Lester Madrid in 2006, I felt most of the air go out of the room.

“You can’t be serious,” Hawkins said, appalled.

“While I was waiting for this meeting, I went on the computer and found out Lester and Stephanie got married in 1998,” I said. “So if he was dating Hannah Trumbull in ’06, that means Sergeant Madrid was having an extramarital affair with Hannah just before she was murdered.”

Everyone just sat there trying to process that.

Bud Hawkins finally asked, “How does Nix Nash keep getting so fucking lucky? This is worse than Atlanta. Captain Madrid is on the short list of suspects for Lita Mendez’s murder and now we find out Nash is also featuring the Hannah Trumbull murder from ’06. A case that happens to involve Captain Madrid’s husband, Lester.”

“What are the odds that these two completely unrelated murders could both involve the Madrids?” Alexa said.

“Astronomical,” Jeb replied. “And how the hell can they both just happen to randomly pop up on that damn TV show? What’s going on with that?”

Morale in the room was plummeting.

“Well, it might not be so far-fetched if you look at the situation back to front instead of front to back,” Hitch said quietly from his seat by the door.

“What the hell are you babbling about?” Hawkins snapped. He had very little patience to begin with and was not displaying what little he had.

“This may seem a little off the point, but when you plot a movie you often work from the resolution backward to the inciting event,” Hitch said. “That way you’re able to keep the story tight. If Nix Nash just happened to pick these two cases randomly, then yeah, the odds are astronomical that they’d both involve the Madrids. But let’s say that’s not how it happened. Suppose Nash knew before he started that Lester and Stephanie touched both situations and he picked those two cases precisely for that reason.”

“I see what Hitch is getting at,” I said. “Nash doesn’t take chances. He knew he was moving to Los Angeles, so working backward, like Hitch says, this isn’t quite so far-fetched. Let’s say Nash researched the whole LAPD in advance of his arriving here. He has his team of researchers digging into the thousands of open homicides. Then after Lita was murdered, he throws all that info on the table and starts looking for a connection. He has his staff investigate Lita’s life. It wouldn’t take him long to come up with Captain Stephanie Madrid and the long-running