Vigilante

“The good news is this probably takes Stephanie Madrid off the hook,” Jeb said.

An hour later my partner was out of surgery. At Hitch’s insistence they’d only used a local anesthetic to clean and close the wound, and when they wheeled him back he was still awake. I went in to see him, along with Jeb and Alexa. They left after twenty minutes when it was obvious Hitch was going to be okay.

Once they’d gone, Hitch grinned up at me.

“What was all that Audie Murphy BS?” he asked. “Throwing yourself on top of me. Next time you pull shit like that, I’m gonna need a kiss first.”

We reached out and bumped fists.

The docs wanted to keep him overnight as a precaution against infection, so after another hour I headed home. It was around four when I left the hospital. I called Alexa as I drove. She was still at the PAB in a meeting with Clarence Moneymaker and the DA, bringing them up-to-date. They were discontinuing the investigation against Stephanie Madrid. Alexa told me she wouldn’t make it home for a few more hours because she had to work on the press release.

I didn’t have much hope that Batiste would be apprehended, because a swamp rat like Lee Bob could go to ground indefinitely in the vast 650,000-acre Angeles National Forest.

I was pretty sure an egomaniac like Nash wouldn’t leave this hanging and would feel compelled to prove his superiority. I was also pretty sure he’d make the next move. When he did, I resolved to be ready.

The problem was, I never expected what he did next.

CHAPTER 43

Once home, my body began to crash. I’d been pumping too much adrenaline for too long and was coming down fast. I needed an emotional boost and some sugar, so I went to the fridge and got one of the expensive blond lagers Hitch drinks and grabbed a few Oreos. I walked outside with this feast and came to a stop next to my low white picket fence a foot from the edge of Venice’s Grand Canal. I hadn’t seen our cat, Franco, in a few days, but it was cat season and he was out hunting up a love connection. I stared down into the murky depths, all two feet of it, and started munching down cookies. The canal is fed by the ocean, and a school of saltwater minnows was swimming in the shallows near where I stood. I watched as a few of them nibbled the mossy rocks at the edge of the bank. The beer was light gold and ice cold. As I chugged half of it down, it made my throat ache.

You can sense when a case is coming to an end. It seems to have a heartbeat. As pieces begin to fall into place the vibe always changes like a big momentum shift in a football game. I could feel the road we were on narrowing and getting slick. I wanted to make sure I didn’t finish this one upside down in a ditch.

It was hard for me to wrap my head around the insanity of Nash creating these murders solely for the purpose of driving up his TV ratings. Could there be something else going on with him that I still didn’t understand? As I stood watching the little inch-long silver fish nibbling at the moss by my feet, I tried to find a rationale that would explain it. I tried to get inside Nash’s head, predict his game.

Going back over what I already knew, he was from a family of cops. When he was on the Florida Marine Patrol, he had humiliated the family name by screwing up a high-profile, media-intense serial killer bust in the Everglades. Lee Bob Batiste had slipped off the law enforcement hook and disappeared like a deadly water moccasin back into that teeming swamp. As a result, Nix had been forced to resign from the Marine Patrol. His father and brothers were all Dade County cops and they had defended him, argued to keep him on the FMP until the heat died down so his departure wouldn’t feel like cause and effect. Then half a year later Nix had quietly resigned. But for a law enforcement family that must have been humiliating. I wondered what Christmas dinner was like at the Nash house that year. Had Nix felt ostracized? Had that chapter in his life changed him, or was Nix a damaged personality from birth?

I walked back inside to my den and pulled down a revised fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I’ve found in the past reading the DSM- IV could be helpful in understanding warped criminal psyches.

I had little doubt by now that Nix was some kind of deviant psychopathic personality. Psychopaths are the most dangerous criminals you can encounter because they share several alarming traits. They’re without conscience and are extremely manipulative and, without exception, very smart. This combination makes them extremely dangerous and difficult to catch. Unlike sociopaths, who are rough impulsives who will break social norms with impunity, the psychopath plots, schemes, and executes his plans with cold-blooded precision.

I found the designation in a large section on severe psychotic disorders. I skipped down past delusional paranoid psychosis and sexual sadism and began to read. The further I went, the more certain I was that Nixon Nash fit the category of a pure psychopath almost perfectly. He was cunning and manipulative, narcissistic and a user.

The DSM-IV said that pure psychopaths are completely lacking in remorse or empathy. This was certainly the quality that would have allowed Nix to so easily order Lee Bob Batiste to kill Lita Mendez, a person Nix claimed to have an abiding friendship with.

The DSM-IV went on to say that the symptoms of psychopathic personality disorder can set in as early as age three or four but are rarely diagnosed until fourteen or fifteen. I made another note to call Miami and check into the reason Nix had not been allowed to join the Metro-Dade Police Department, where the rest of his family served. I began to wonder if the medical issues that had barred him from the department were mental instead of physical. Had the more in-depth psychological testing required by the Dade County police turned up his deviant personality? Was that why he had joined the FMP instead?

The chapter continued listing elements of psychotic personality disorder. Psychopaths tended to have white- collar jobs and generally didn’t resort to committing crimes in order to survive, choosing that course only when a huge reward justified the risk. They were frequently articulate, charming, and charismatic. All classifications that pretty much fit Nix Nash. According to the DSM, the thing that most motivates a psychopath appears to be a love of control and power. They are masters at reading and exploiting other people’s vulnerabilities. Psychopaths’ primary weakness tends to be egotism.

Nix had scrupulously planned the killing along with his alibi and, being an extreme egoist, believed he could get away with almost anything. This prevailing weakness was leading him closer and closer to the edge.

As I sat back to think it over, I realized it was almost six o’clock. I’d been at this for over an hour.

Then the phone rang. I reached over and picked it up.

“Yeah?”

“Shane, I need your help,” a woman’s tense voice whispered. She sounded terrified.

“Marcia?”

“Yes. Listen. He-Nix-he, he’s out here,” she sputtered breathlessly. “I can’t go home. I-”

“Calm down, Marcia. Where are you?”

“He’s gonna kill me.”

“Where are you?” I demanded again, sharply.

“I’m parked up the block from my apartment. I’m afraid to go in there. He knows I found out what he’s doing. I think he could be-” She stopped, then said, “I don’t know where he is, but when he gets like this he-”

“Marcia, I need an address.”

“Two-Three-Five-Eight Ocean Way in the hills above Malibu. It’s just off the Coast Highway. I’m in my car parked up the street. He’s crazy, Shane.”

“What kind of car are you driving?”

“It’s a white Cadillac convertible with the top up. I’ll tell you exactly how he keeps doing this, how he solves these cases, but you’ve got to come now. Only you, nobody else! I can’t trust anybody. You’ve got to promise you’ll protect me!”

“I’m on my way. It’s gonna take me twenty minutes. Can you stay safe until then?”

“I think so. I’ll try.”

I hung up, and as I ran through the pantry grabbed a hammer out of a drawer before I continued out back to my car. I got inside and used the tool to knock the rearview mirror off the Acura. I threw the mirror out of the window and into a box next to the driveway. I started the car and pulled out.