Vigilante

“Love you too.”

After he hung up I sat there watching the moon on the water and tried to keep my mind off the possibility of my son being wooed into a law enforcement career. I guess you naturally set higher goals for your children than yourself. I had visions of him using his finance degree to run a large multi-national corporation or something. I chose police work because of who I was and a need for an identity back when I didn’t have one. It was a perfect choice for me, but I had larger ambitions for Chooch.

I finally pushed that thought away and also tried not to think about the two cases Hitch and I were working on. I’ve discovered that a little separation can be helpful. If I create some distance, the next time I open the folder I might see things I’d completely missed before.

But my thoughts kept pulling me back into that strange meeting with Nash aboard the Bounty. I wondered about his insistence on equating a British naval mutiny that took place over two hundred years ago to current law enforcement practices in Los Angeles. The more I thought about it, the more it had me wondering about his mental state. Or maybe I just wanted him to be crazy because crazy people are easier to catch.

So far, Nix Nash had not made any obvious goofs that I could spot. It wasn’t hard to figure out why he kept inviting me to go to work for him in rooms he controlled. I was pretty sure Bligh’s cabin and Nash’s studio dressing room were both outfitted with hidden cameras or mikes, just like the one in my car. My new paranoid theory was Nash wanted me to agree to sell out the department on some hidden camera so he could unpack me in front of his national TV audience.

The front door opened and I heard Alexa drop her briefcase on the table.

“I’m home,” she called out.

“Bring me a beer,” I called back.

A moment later she appeared on the patio and handed me a Corona. Then she sat down beside me.

“I’ve been worried about those two coffee cups ever since you called me,” she said. “If the science lab puts Stephanie or Lester Madrid in Lita’s driveway the night of her murder, then we’re going to have to bust one of them, and that’s going to set our inner city on fire.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” I said.

But of course the next morning that’s exactly what happened.

CHAPTER 38

The call came in at 8:00 A.M., just as Alexa and I were about to leave. I picked it up in the den.

“Detective Scully?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“This is Erica Hobbs with Forensic Biology. We got back the overnight on that DNA scan you requested.”

“Whatta you got?” My heart rate started climbing.

“We have a solid match to the cup you found in Lita Mendez’s driveway. One in fifty billion probability.”

“Which one is it, Lester or Stephanie?” I asked, hoping it was Lester, because at least he was not an active police officer anymore.

“I’m afraid it’s Captain Madrid’s DNA,” Erica said.

“Shit,” I muttered softly. “Listen, we really need to keep this on the DL. How many people know about it yet?”

“Just me and my lab partner.”

“Okay, look. You know what’s at stake here. We’re going to have to move fast. Just guard that info.”

“It’s guarded,” she said.

I hung up and found Alexa in the bedroom, loading rounds into her light Spanish Astra, which she jokingly called the lady’s home companion.

“That was CSI. The DNA matched on Stephanie Madrid.”

Alexa paused mid-motion, then turned slowly to face me.

“Na-a-aw-w-w,” she said softly.

“I gotta call Hitch. We better pull this together fast. We’re going to need an arrest warrant. If it leaks before we can release a statement to the press, we’re fucked. We’ve gotta control the message. I’d like to pick Captain Madrid up before ten.” I looked at my watch. “That’s in a couple of hours.”

The next hour was a flurry of activity. I called Hitch, told him the bad news, and agreed to meet him downtown in forty minutes. I rode in with Alexa in her BMW, leaving my bugged Acura in the garage. All the way to the office, Alexa was on the Bluetooth in her car, setting things up, giving instructions.

“Notify DC Hawkins and Chief Filosiani,” she said to her adjunct. “And get Captain Myer from Media Relations over to my office right away. We’re going to need a prepared statement and I want somebody full-time on media tamp downs. Also, get a warrant delivery team on standby and send a UC out to Captain Madrid’s house to keep her under surveillance until we can pick her up. I think she lives in Valley Village or Sherman Oaks. Get the address from Records. I want to make sure we know where she and her husband are at all times.”

We arrived in the PAB at eight forty-five and convened a meeting in Alexa’s office on the command floor. In the room were Jeb, Hitch, Bud Hawkins, and Sgt. Britt Mills from the warrant delivery team. Mills was another one of those expressionless, hard-eyed gunfighters who always seem to end up in our high-risk shooting units.

Chief Filosiani stuck his face into the room but said he couldn’t stay. The superchief was a short, lunch box- shaped guy with a shiny bald head and Santa Claus cheeks. He didn’t look as much like a police chief as he did a market manager, but this morning he was a grocer with an attitude.

“Two things,” he said sharply, standing in Alexa’s doorway. “This has to be a no-incident takedown. That means you screen Lester Madrid off first. Second, everything, and I mean every little scintilla of info headed to sources outside this immediate venue, gets processed through my chief adjunct, Rodello Morales. I want RoMo to have strict control of all facts and be the sole distributor of information.”

Capt. Bert Myer from Media Relations showed up and waited in the corridor behind the chief until he finished. Dubbed Myer the Liar by the troops, he had a thankless job. Myer ran the LAPD Media Relations office and he was going to have to manage the press fallout, which would be huge. How often does the head of Internal Affairs get arrested for killing the city’s leading police critic?

After the chief left, we got down to it. The undercover was already out at Stephanie Madrid’s house and had notified us by phone that both Lester’s and Stephanie’s cars were still in the driveway.

“Let’s do this,” Alexa said after we ran through our arrest plan.

Forty minutes later, we were parked half a block down the street from the Madrids’ well-cared-for faux Italian two-story house in a middle-class Valley neighborhood. The gray Navigator with the tinted windows was still in the driveway. Parked in front of it was Captain Madrid’s deluxe dark blue department sedan. When we got there and relieved the UC, it was just a little before ten.

At ten thirty, Lester Madrid exited the house, got into the gray SUV, and pulled out. Once he was gone, the warrant delivery team moved. While Hitch, Alexa, and I covered the outside, SWAT Sergeant Mills knocked on the front door.

Stephanie Madrid answered, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. We watched from positions of advantage as the three cops on the front porch spoke to her for a few seconds, then took her into custody, cuffed her, and drove her to the Police Administration Building.

The arrest was quick and easy, but booking Captain Madrid for suspicion of Lita’s murder was a little more complex. What happened now was going to be part of the public record and would be on the evening news. Nix Nash would have a field day.

As soon as she was Mirandized, Captain Madrid demanded her attorney. It turned out that, as a precaution, she had already hired Clarence Moneymaker. He was L.A.’s new Johnnie Cochran-an elegant, spindly African- American who fit his name remarkably well. He oozed confidence and diamond accessories. His client list spanned everyone from A-list celebrities to unrepentant gang killers. However, he was shrewdly effective when he got to the defendant’s table.

Of course, he immediately pointed out that a coffee cup outside a crime scene wasn’t enough to charge his